by Brian Wiprud
• SO LET’S DO THIS, UNDERWOOD.
• FOUR O’CLOCK. IN THE BANANA REPUBLIC, ENTRANCE ON 42ND STREET. JUST YOU AND YOUR BRIEFCASE, TWO MILLION CASH IN HUNDREDS, STANDARD 10K BUNDLES IN STANDARD ISSUE MUSTARD BANDS. THE REST: EIGHT MILLION IN GUAT BONDS. I’LL MEET YOU AT THE RETURNS DESK. THERE ARE COPS RIGHT OUTSIDE THAT LOCATION ON 42ND STREET ALL THE TIME, SO DON’T TRY ANYTHING CUTE. AND REMEMBER, THERE ARE A LOT OF INNOCENT BYSTANDERS AROUND THERE.
• NOBODY IS INNOCENT.
• FOUR O’CLOCK.
*END*
18. EOCTF Supervisor Palmer advised agents to ping and intercept G. Underwood’s cell phone. Deploys Grand Central intercept, reminding agents to advise all operatives of extreme caution and no preemptive action. Next meeting scheduled for Tuesday August 10, 2010, time: 900 EDT.
******************MEETING ADJOURNED******************
Thirty-six
DCSNet 6000 Warrant Database
Transcript Cell Phone Track and Trace
Peerless IP Network / Redhook Translation
Target: Dragan Spikic
Date: Monday, August 9, 2010
Time: 1532–1533 EDT
SPIKIC: TALK TO ME, VUGO.
VUGOVIC: UNDERWOOD CALLED. HE IS AFRAID OF THE CHINESE NOW AND WANTS TO HURRY TO ESCAPE TO SAVE THE LIFE OF HIS WOMAN. HE ASKED THAT I MEET HIM AT THE GRAND CENTRAL BANANA REPUBLIC WITH THE TEN MILLION DOLLARS, ALONE.
SPIKIC: WHAT TEN MILLION DOLLARS?
VUGOVIC: WE’VE PUT A LITTLE SURPRISE IN THE BRIEFCASE INSTEAD OF THE TEN MILLION DOLLARS. WE WILL APPREHEND HIM AND THE GEMS AND THEN DISEMBOWEL HIM WITH POWER TOOLS.
SPIKIC: SEE, I TOLD YOU, HE IS A COMMON THIEF, A STUPID CROOK.
VUGOVIC: IS IT SET WITH THE ISRAELIS TOMORROW?
SPIKIC: YES. MAKE SURE THERE ARE NONE OF THIS WORM’S GUTS ON THE GEMS. I WANT THEM TO LOOK NICE FOR THE JEWS. CALL ME WHEN YOU HAVE THEM. BUT YOU MUST HAVE THEM TONIGHT OR WE HAVE SERIOUS PROBLEMS.
VUGOVIC: PROBLEMS?
SPIKIC: I HAVE A BOSS, TOO.
VUGOVIC: HE MUST UNDERSTAND—
SPIKIC: WHAT MUST HE UNDERSTAND EXCEPT WE HAVE FAILED AND ARE WEAK?
VUGOVIC: WE ARE DOING ALL WE CAN. THERE IS ONLY SO MUCH THAT—
SPIKIC: YOU HAVE TO ANSWER FOR FAILURE; I HAVE TO ANSWER FOR FAILURE. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?
VUGOVIC: AS YOU SAY.
*END*
Thirty-seven
I stopped in Fort Lee, just before the George Washington Bridge, and parked behind Tip Top Gym. That was my other gym, another place where I kept a change of clothes and a toiletry kit and could stash sparks. In my locker I had a can of tennis balls. I emptied it, filled it with water, and slid in the incendiary grenade. Common practice is to store them in water just in case the canister develops a leak. The phosphorus inside bursts into flame anytime it comes into contact with oxygen. I didn’t like the idea of driving around with that thing in the trunk or carrying it around. A healthy respect for explosives is healthy, as Larry used to say.
Phoning was getting too dangerous—every time I turned on the phone I had to expect that my location was being mapped by somebody unfriendly. Or worse: listened to. I knew that it was difficult to monitor calls on prepaid phones, but that didn’t mean it was impossible. I couldn’t risk letting anybody know my next move. So instead of calling Doc I just drove to Queens through afternoon traffic thick with trucks.
I looked at Tito’s watch: 4:00. I would have loved to have been able to sit across 42nd Street at the outdoor café with a beer and watch the shit storm at Banana Republic, but I needed to take advantage of the FBI and the Kurac being distracted at the same time.
Parked on Union Street, I opened the car trunk. My new two-tone fly-fishing duffel and matching dual-rod case made me smile. Imagine me, fly fishing? Imagine me out of this mess zooming across the Bahamian shallows through mangrove channels, emerging into the expanse of blue bays and crystal-clear flats? I wanted to inhale that crisp ocean air and have it blow through my hair, making it thick with salt.
Zipping open the handsome duffel, I pulled out fly-fishing clothes, snapping off a jillion tags in the process. I changed in the back seat. The solid blue shirt and khaki pants looked like tropical safari gear, very lightweight and vented, with huge pockets, which was good because I had wads of cash I wanted to keep close. The legs zipped off so you could make shorts, kind of like convertible pants. Bright white running shoes went on my feet. I used some Pepsi to slick back my white hair, and put on a fresh pair of cheap CVS shades with amber lenses. A regular fashion plate.
I slid the cigar box out from under the seat and armed the explosive in exactly the way I had been instructed and slid it under the seat again. I put Phone #3’s number into the speed dial of Phone #2.
At the corner I dumped my CVS shirt, cargo pants, and straw trilby into a trash can and turned the corner toward Main Street. I didn’t see anybody unusual standing around the entrance to East Trading Jewelers, so I walked in. There was an Asian woman at the counter—a slim one this time, with long hair.
“Hi, I need to see Doc. She’s expecting me.”
“She not here.”
“Call her. It’s very important, and I know she wants to see me immediately. My name is Gill. I’ll be at the Burger King.”
One thing about fast food places is that they are crowded at all hours, especially on Main Street, which has a jillion buses and subways. The sidewalks are always packed with people like it was Coney Island on the Fourth of July.
There were so many Asians milling around on the sidewalk that it was impossible to tell if the Tong had Doc’s place staked out. My hunch was that Doc wanted this deal to actually go through and may have talked sense into the Hong Kong friends, who in turn would probably not stake out her place but wait for a call.
I sat in the corner of the Burger King, away from the windows, and waited. In five minutes Doc came through the doors in a tan pantsuit.
“You want a burger or something?”
“That’s okay, Doc, I try not to eat this stuff.”
She squeezed between rows of students and old-timers to my table and sat across from me.
“Gill, I apologize for last night, and so do the Hong Kong friends. The guy driving the Hummer, Tse Mo Shin, was the same one you bounced around at the motel, and he was pissed off.”
“Yeah, well, it doesn’t exactly make me trust you guys more or anything.”
“The volleyball had the paper and the tickets inside, didn’t it?”
“That’s the only reason I’m here.”
“How is Trudy?”
“Hanging in there, thanks to the voodoo stuff from Mr. Zim.”
“Good to hear. You know, the Kurac would have filled the volleyball with scorpions. You dyed your hair—has that helped stay clear of the Kurac? I don’t like you with white hair. You look like a punk.”
I didn’t like the way Doc was being so chit-chatty. It made me feel like we were being listened to, that she was wired and trying to tell the Hong Kong friends that I had changed my look.
“So, Doc, can we go ahead and do this thing, no screwing around?”
“There’s the Kurac and then there’s the FBI. After that chase last night, the cops—“
“Did the Hummer and train smash into each other?”
“Thankfully, no, but the cops grabbed the three men inside the Hummer, and tried to turn one of our guys, Shin, into an informant for the FBI. He’s been passing only the information we want to go back to the Fed.”
“Yes, I got wind the FBI are snooping around. But you don’t have to worry about them or the Kurac for a few hours, as long as Shin doesn’t flip for real.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean right now the Kurac and the FBI think I’m handing over the
sparks at Grand Central Station. They’re otherwise occupied. We don’t have a lot of time, though. I’m not sure how long that will keep those guys tied up. Can your Hong Kong friends deliver right now so we can get this over with? I’m beat.”
She pulled out a cell phone. “You should have called. I could already have it arranged.”
“Your friends knew we were doing this today; they should have the cash and bonds ready. Using my phone has become too dangerous—and if I were you I’d be careful with your phone. The FBI have the Kurac totally wired, know everything they say, and I’ve got to believe they can ping and intercept anything you say when you call your friends.”
“These phones we use are protected.” Doc pushed a speed dial number and listened. “They are Taiwanese. All calls go overseas first and are encrypted.”
“Maybe the Kurac think that their phones are protected, too. You know that the FBI can actually turn on the microphone on some phones even when they’re turned off? I’d say as little as possible. Send one guy with the money in even packets. You, me, and him will go get the sparks and then part ways. Nice and easy.”
Doc began speaking into the phone in Chinese.
“Doc, in English, so I know what you’re saying.”
She put a hand over the phone. “They don’t speak English, Gill.”
“Well, don’t fuck me over, Doc, or we’re all liable to end up in the hospital, or worse. I mean it, I have fail-safes in place, tell them that. They mess around and everybody loses. They play it straight, we all win. Tell them that.”
She spoke rapidly into the phone, shielding her mouth, eyes darting toward the front of the restaurant. After a few moments she snapped the phone shut.
“They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“They?”
“I meant ‘they’ in the sense that the Hong Kong friends are sending someone over with the cash.”
“You verify the sparks, I verify the cash.”
“Exactly. Where are we going to get the sparks?”
“You’ll know when we get there.”
“You have to tell us when we get in the car anyway, so we can know where to go. You tell me, I’m sitting here with you: how are they going to know until they get here?”
“Cute, Doc, but you could be wired.”
“Gill, you’re paranoid.”
“Paranoid and still alive. I have respect enough for your friends to know that they will pull anything they can to hold onto that cash. Don’t look insulted—I have no doubt you’d like to see this deal go through no matter what. Their motives are their own. And if they wanted you to wear a wire, you’d do it, you wouldn’t have a choice.”
“You sure you don’t want a burger or something while we wait?”
“I’d rather go around the corner for string beans with minced pork.”
“We could do that.”
“But I’m not exactly hungry at the moment.”
“You don’t look so good, Gill.”
“I know, I look like Billy Idol.”
“The stress of this situation is taking a toll.”
“Under the white hair there are a few gray ones creeping in as we speak, Doc. The only thing I can do about it is exactly nothing except to stay focused and keep moving forward. Let’s wait out front.”
We waded through the other patrons and out the door, standing in front of the Burger King plate-glass windows. I matched a Winston and scanned the masses, but it was impossible to tell if any scouts had been deployed to trail us. I had to assume they had.
Then I saw him. It was China Boss, the one from the Plaza hallway with black-framed yellow sunglasses, damaged complexion, and oversized sport coat. In his hand was a small red suitcase.
How big a pile is two million dollars? I’d spent some time thinking about that, playing with the wad of cash I had. The math was made a little easier having fifty thousand in hundreds on me, which was about two inches thick. So I was estimating that a million in one stack of hundreds would be forty inches tall, Divide that into four stacks bunched together, and the pile would be about five or six inches wide by a foot long by ten inches high. China Boss’s little red suitcase could easily hold two million, plus the bearer bonds. Might also hold a Tech 9 and bad intentions.
I stomped out my smoke as China Boss came to a stop in front of us, his eyes trained on mine. He mumbled in Chinese to Doc.
“What did he say, Doc?”
“He said you look tired.”
“Tired of people telling me I look tired. Let’s go, I have a car. He drives.”
China Boss took the driver’s seat, Doc riding shotgun, me in back with the suitcase.
“Doc, I want you to reach under the driver’s seat. Take out what you find.”
A moment later Doc was holding the cigar box, her brow knit.
“Open it.”
She did, and both her and China Boss recoiled.
I held up Phone #2.
“Any cute stuff and the deal is over with a wave of my thumb. Tell him, Doc.”
Doc rattled off some Chinese.
“Close it and hand it to me.”
I took it from Doc and set it on the seat next to me.
“I’m going to count the money now and make sure we’re not taking a trip for no reason. Doc, tell him that, and tell him to not even think about pulling one of his guns. It won’t work.”
While Doc translated to China Boss, I zipped open the little red suitcase. Sure enough, a dense pack of stacked hundreds with mustard bands: ten thousand dollars each. Since I had the cell phone in one hand, I had to feel through the cash for Monopoly money one-handed. Random stacks were pure green and random bills from those packs all had the security stripe. From my belly bag I pulled the currency marker and checked out random bills. There was a manila envelope under the money, and it contained the rest of the haul: eight million in Guat bonds in two hundred thousand dollar denominations.
A movie I saw in the hospital came to mind, one of those spaghetti Westerns. Clint Eastwood was in it, and in the end there was a three-way showdown in a cemetery over a treasure buried in a grave. Clint was the only one who knew the name on the grave, and he wrote the name of the grave on the bottom of a rock. The survivor of the shootout would turn over the rock and be rich, while presumably the other two would be dead. But Clint had an advantage. Only he knew one of his opponent’s guns was unloaded, and only he knew that he hadn’t written anything on the bottom of the rock. Why would he? If he didn’t win the shootout, why let his enemy have the treasure?
“Doc, tell him it all looks good, and if he just plays it straight and easy, we’ll both have what we want with nobody getting killed.” I stuffed four bundles of cash and ten of the Guat bonds from the suitcase in the belly bag for pocket money. You never knew in a situation like that when you might have to make a run for it. “He can drive now. Toward the Grand Central Parkway, heading west.”
“Airport?”
“No guessing.”
While China Boss took a few turns toward College Point Boulevard, I reached into the cigar box and pulled the trigger out of the cell phone. It scared the hell out of me that some chucklehead might dial a wrong number, or that AT&T would send a text message trying to sell me crap I didn’t want. The odds were long, but that’s the kind of thing that happens in an operation. The unexpected.
Thirty-eight
EUROPEAN ORGANIZED CRIME TASK FORCE
MEMORANDUM
1630 EDT MONDAY AUGUST 9, 2010
TO: EOCTF SUPERVISOR PALMER
FROM: EOCTF AGENTS BROWN AND ACOSTA
RE: G. UNDERWOOD/KURAC EXCHANGE, GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL
Details of the exchange: With the cooperation of New York City police and managers of the Banana Republic at Grand Central, EOCTF Agents Co
x and Farnsworth were stationed inside the Banana Republic posing as return desk employees with two members of the New York City organized crime task force concealed in the changing room nearby and two others posing as customers. Surveillance cameras were installed to cover the interior of the store. EOCTF Agents Brown and Acosta were stationed outside the Banana Republic and witnessed two known Kurac operatives identified as Moti Rulov and Hig Junopic enter the Grand Central Banana Republic at approximately 4:00 p.m. Rulov carried a brown briefcase. At the returns desk, Rulov and Junopic inquired whether a friend had been waiting for them. Before EOCTF Agent Cox could reply, a slender unidentified man in a bicycle helmet entered the store carrying a gift bag and announced he had a delivery for “Vugovic.” Rulov and Junopic approached the man and asked if he was Gill Underwood. He answered that he was a messenger and asked if Rulov was Vugovic. Rulov said he was and took receipt of the gift bag. The messenger asked for a signature. While Junopic signed the messenger’s receipt, Rulov examined the contents of the gift bag and tossed it aside. They departed the Banana Republic at approximately 4:05 p.m., EOCTF Agents Brown and Acosta tracking them back to the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, where they were witnessed meeting with Loj Vugovic briefly before all departing and walking east on East 58th Street. Along the way the brown briefcase was deposited in a trash receptacle. New York City Organized Crime Task Force were alerted to isolate and retrieve the briefcase. Vugovic, Junopic, and Rulov stopped into the Old Stand Pub on Second Avenue and met three other Kurac. They emerged from the bar and departed in three Audi sedans parked on Second Avenue. EOCTF agents and New York City Organized Crime Task Force members detained and questioned the messenger, Thomas Forini, of Chelsea Messengers. The gift bag contents were examined and identified as a set of double old-fashioned glasses purchased from CVS. The package was retained for forensics to examine. EOCTF agents and New York City Organized Crime Task Force members returned with Thomas Forini to Chelsea Messengers to interview staff and review security video.
Interim conclusions: The false exchange may have been a diversion for an actual exchange taking place elsewhere, possibly with the Nee Fat Tong. The Kurac possibly sensed the exchange was false, and in any case did not bring the agreed fee in cash and Guat bonds, but instead a brown briefcase (recovered by the NYPD) was found to contain a large pit viper, the exact type as yet unknown. Agents Kim and Bola of Intel Surveillance section report they have lost touch with Tse Mo Shin, 22, male, Chinese national, illegal alien, who turned informer. Surveillance subsystems targeting Nee Fat Tong cell phones no longer functional. Surveillance section suggests the informer may have been uncovered.