Politika (1997)

by Clancy, Tom - Power Plays 01

  The mikes were set up at a podium at the top of the City Hall steps. A huge crowd of reporters of all kinds, all bundled up against the cold, flowed down the stairway and into the street, which had been blocked off and barricaded by the police department. Flanked by representatives from the police, the fire department, the city council, and the FBI, Andrea surveyed the crowd.

  Finally she stepped up to the mike and began her presentation. As the grim statistics rolled off her lips, she made a silent vow: Somebody would pay for this if she had to see to it herself.

  TWENTY

  WASHINGTON, D.C. JANUARY 2, 2000 FROM THE

  WASHINGTON POST:

  FBI Official Leaves

  Questions of Fifth Bomb

  Unanswered

  Fuels Conjecture With Statements

  About Evidence at FBI Explosives

  Lab

  WASHINGTON—During a news conference today at the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, Assistant Director Robert Lang remained vague about whether the FBI is in possession of physical clues to the identity of the bomber or bombers responsible for the bloody New Year’s Eve attack that left an estimated 700 persons dead and injured thousands more in Times Square.

  In a prepared statement to the media, Lang officially confirmed for the first time that the powerful explosion that occurred at 11:56 P.M. was followed by three secondary blasts of “a deliberate nature,” ruling out the possibility that they may have stemmed from violent damage to underground gas mains in the bombing, as had been reported by some news organizations. He went on to term eyewitness accounts “extraordinarily helpful to the investigation,” and expressed confidence that photographs and video tapes taken at the scene will provide law enforcement agents with a clear picture of “matters of relevant interest that occurred before and after the event.”

  Lang was considerably more guarded, however, when asked about an item found by investigators rumored to be a fifth explosive device that failed to detonate. “I can only tell you that we do possess substantial evidence believed to have been left behind by the perpetrator or perpetrators, and presently under analysis in our Laboratory Division’s Explosive Unit-Bomb Data Center,” Lang said in a brief Q&A session following his prepared statement. “We are unable to be more specific right now for investigative reasons, but want to reassure the public, and especially the relatives of those indiscriminately killed or injured in the blast, that we are as sickened by what happened as anyone else, and have committed all our resources to solving this case.”

  Rather than quell speculation that another bomb may have been discovered by members of the New York Police Department Emergency Services Unit within minutes of the fatal explosions, Lang’s comments drew attention for having mentioned the EU-BDC— which serves as the FBI’s primary laboratory for the examination of bombing devices—as the unit where the mysterious evidence is being processed. Also, while noting that tests of explosive residue and other trace materials are among the functions normally performed by the EU-BDC, Lang refused to “limit the categorization of evidence to one particular type or another” when responding to follow-up questions by reporters.

  The implications of this may be significant, say many forensics experts. Even partial remains of an explosive device are likely to reveal “signature” characteristics that can be matched against those of devices used in other bombing incidents and potentially link it to a suspect or terrorist organization ...

  The reports about the mysterious fifth bomb were almost on the money.

  The undetonated satchel charge was, in fact, found outside a storefront on Fifty-second Street and Seventh Avenue, although by firemen rather than police officers. In response to a request for operational support from the NYPD, technicians wearing bomb protective suits from the FBI’s New York field office were quickly dispatched to collect the evidence. When it was determined that the device’s fusing system was inoperative, and that it was therefore safe for transport, the specialized unit—in a procedure okayed by the local assistant director—arranged for the satchel charge to be delivered to FBI HQ in Washington, D.C., where it was given over to the EU-BDC for scientific examination. A further discovery at the bomb scene by agents equipped with ultraviolet lights had caused the laboratory to buzz with anticipation well in advance of the package’s arrival: fluorescence had been detected in both the unexploded charge and debris samples collected near the site of the initial blast, strongly indicating the explosives had been tagged with chemical markers by their manufacturer. Their reaction was strongly warranted—while not yet legally mandated in the United States, tagging had been required by the Swiss government for years and was a voluntary practice among an increasing number of international explosives suppliers. If indeed present, the expectation was that the markers would lead investigators back to the point of sale, and produce valuable information about the purchaser of the bomb-making material.

  Soon after the C-4 satchel charge reached the lab, a microthin sliver was taken from it, placed on a specimen slide, and then exposed to a Tesla coil magnet for the purpose of orienting the tags of melamine plastic—each chemically inert particle about the size of a speck of pollen and striated with color—that it might contain. Typically taggants were mixed with explosive ingredients at concentrations of 250 parts per million, a ratio that allows the explosive to retain its full stability and performance, while showing up for easy viewing under microscopic examination. In this instance, an Olympus binocular light microscope equipped with 35mm Polaroid video was used by a forensics specialist who immediately verified the presence of markers and, working with feverish excitement, read and photographed the taggants for their color-coded information about the manufacturer, production date, and batch number of the plastique.

  From there it became a fairly routine computer search. The information was checked against the main charge identification database for commercial explosives which had recently been added to the Explosives Reference and Search System—dubbed EXPRESS by government techies with a fondness for acronyms—and drew a hit on the first shot.

  The manufacturer was ID’d as Lian International, a chemical firm that was part of a larger Malaysian conglomerate based in Kuala Lumpur, and headed by an ethnic Chinese businessman named Teng Chou. Though this was an important and satisfying investigatory link, it paled in comparison to what was uncovered next: when a trace was run on the plastique’s batch number, it turned out to match that of a shipment recently sold to a Russian munitions distributor with strong government ties.

  With that piece of info under their belts, the investigators in the EU-BDC knew they had come onto something big.

  From beginning to end, it was a textbook example of how careful and diligent analysis of evidence throughout the entire chain of custody could yield phenomenally successful results.

  It was also the first step down the garden path for the entire American intelligence community.

  TWENTY-ONE

  NEW YORK CITY JANUARY 3, 2000 CALVARY CEMETERY, QUEENS

  SNOW FELL GENTLY ON THE TREES AND MONUMENTS that surrounded him. Under any other circumstance, he’d have thought the scene was beautiful. Rosetta would have liked it, too, if she could have seen it from inside a room with a good heating system. She got cold too easily to appreciate winter landscapes under any other conditions. He’d had them put blankets with her, in her coffin. He hated the thought that she would never be warm again. But then, he hated everything about this.

  Police Commissioner Bill Harrison stood on the edge of an open grave. He knew he wasn’t alone. This scene would be enacted hundreds of times as New York buried her dead. But that was no comfort. It just made it worse somehow.

  How was he supposed to go on, without Rosetta? She was his heart, his center, his reason for existence. When the job got to be too much for him, when the things he saw every day overwhelmed him, he would go home to this woman and she would make it all right again. She couldn’t change what he saw. But every moment he was wi
th her, he knew what he was fighting to protect. She represented all that was good in the world.

  And now he was putting her in a hole in the ground. They’d be bringing the coffin here any minute.

  The pain was devastating.

  For the millionth time, he asked himself why he’d let her go with him to Times Square. He could have said no, claimed that there weren’t enough seats to spare for real working people after the politicians took their cut. He’d had that option, in his infinite wisdom but he had decided Rosie’s certain pleasure outweighed the risks.

  It was something he found hard to forgive.

  His daughter stood next to him. Her tears were acid in his wounds. She could have died, too, all because he hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t stopped it before it started. As it was, her nightmares were as haunted by that moment as his were. She’d been scarred, this child he cherished—on his watch, at his side, when he should have been able to prevent it.

  Why hadn’t he?

  It was no good blaming it on the mayor. The man was dead. He’d paid the ultimate price, if his relentless politicking had made the target too good to pass up.

  It was no good blaming his men. The vender’s cart had looked fine to him in the split second he’d seen it. How could they have found anything? The earliest reports from the blast site indicated that this was a slick, professional job, invisible to even the most careful inspection.

  The pallbearers, most of them police officers in full dress uniform, brought the coffin, slowly placed it onto the straps that would lower Rosie into the ground, gone from him until the next life claimed him, too.

  His heart nearly burst from the pain of it.

  He reached out and took his daughter’s hand, squeezed it.

  The news cameras hummed and clicked.

  Even their grief was a public matter.

  The coffin was slowly lowered. When it reached its final resting place, the thud of the wood hitting the dirt was the loneliest, most final sound he had ever heard in his life.

  Like the noise of the blast, it would haunt him, too.

  The preacher intoned words of comfort. The sounds washed over him, useless now, but perhaps later, alone, as he sifted through his memories of this day, he would find a small measure of the peace they were intended to impart.

  Now he dropped the bouquet of roses he’d brought with him onto the casket. Bright splashes of scarlet against the polished wood surface, they were slowly, slowly covered by the white flecks of snow, still falling gently. Like his heart, the blossoms were soon sheathed in ice.

  Tasheya’s forget-me-nots joined his offering. As the service wound to a close, he watched them, too, fade under the onslaught from heaven.

  He had lost his Rosie. The emptiness inside him was so vast he wasn’t sure how his body could contain it. But he had something to do that kept the grief that threatened to swamp him at bay.

  He was the police commissioner of the city of New York. It was his job to find out who had done this. The day he brought those people to justice, his healing could begin.

  TWENTY-TWO

  MOSCOW JANUARY 6, 2000

  THE BATHHOUSE ON ULITSA PETROVKA WAS A FAVORITE recreational spot for gangsters, government officials, and those for whom the distinction was negligible, and Yuri Vostov came there two and often three times a week to relax in the hot tub or sauna, always at noon on the dot, and never without at least two women on his arms.

  Vostov considered his visits to be therapeutic as well as sources of profound physical pleasure—and pleasure was something he would not let himself take for granted. This was because of a scare he’d had some years back, when he was approaching his fiftieth birthday. Right around that time, he had found his sexual vigor to be on the wane, and even begun to fear he was becoming impotent after several horrid and ignoble embarrassments between the sheets. Though he had a large roster of young, beautiful women available as bedroom partners, and though each was talented and imaginative in her own way, nothing they did seemed to stimulate him. His encounters with these lovers continued in a rather lackluster, almost perfunctory fashion until one night, under advice from a friend in government, he engaged in a menage à trois—something he’d inexplicably never done before—with a pair of sisters known for their willingness to perform as a team, and gained salvation between their sweating bodies.

  He supposed the secret had been in admitting that he was a man who valued quantity above quality. As with food, drink, and possessions, the key to his greatest fulfillment turned out to be getting what he liked all at once.

  Today his companions in the sauna were Nadia and Svieta, not the sisters who had originally shown him the path to middle-aged carnal enlightenment—not relatives at all, to his knowledge—but a willing and enthusiastic pair in their own right. An auburn brunette, Nadia was wearing a pair of gold hoop earrings and nothing else. Svieta, a cinnamon redhead, had chosen to accent her nudity with a gold anklet. Both were on their knees in front of Vostov, who had also shed his towel, and was seated on a wooden bench watching their heads bob up and down below his ample stomach, their breasts swimming freely in a pearlescent haze of steam.

  That was when a rap on the door suddenly tore Vostov and his companions from their rapture. Nadia’s gold hoop stopped banging against his inner thigh, Svieta’s spread of red hair rose off his lap, and both looked up at him with somewhat baffled expressions on their faces, as if unsure how to proceed.

  He frowned, thinking foul thoughts about whoever had ruined the moment.

  “What is it?” he barked.

  “Prasteeyeh, Mr. Vostov,” the attendant said from the hallway. “There’s a call on your cellular phone—”

  “A call? I told you we weren’t to be disturbed!”

  “I know, sir, but it’s been beeping constantly and—”

  “Shit! Enough!” Vostov stood up, snapped his towel off its hook, and wrapped it around his waist. Then he opened the door a crack and reached an arm out, steam curling around his fleshy elbows. “Hand it to me, will you?”

  The attendant passed the phone to him and backed away. Pushing the door shut, Vostov fingered a button on the keypad to accept an incoming call.

  “Yes?” he said, lifting the phone to his ear.

  “Ah, Yuri. I sincerely hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  Vostov recognized Teng Chou’s voice and frowned again.

  “You are,” he said.

  “Forgive me, then. But I had been trying to reach you at your office for some time.”

  Vostov glanced over at Nadia and Svieta, who had taken places on the bench and were speaking to each other in whispers punctuated by low giggles. Was there something funny here that he was missing?

  “Never mind,” he said, growing more sharply annoyed. “What is it?”

  “I’ve had trouble getting calls through to a certain party of our mutual acquaintance. Indeed, I’m sure that I transferred some of my impatience with him onto you.”

  “I told you to forget it,” Vostov said. “Why get me involved, anyway?”

  “My friend,” Teng said in a mild tone, enunciating his words carefully in Russian, “you are already quite deeply involved.”

  Vostov blanched.

  “You know what I mean. I’m not some permanent go-between between the two of you.”

  “Of course not. But you did broker the deal.” Teng paused. “Probably the deficient line of communication, shall we say, means nothing. These are hectic days for us all. Still, my backers need some reassurance that they will receive full satisfaction. That matters will proceed as had been discussed.”

  Vostov turned away from the two women and dropped his voice a notch.

  “Look, I don’t give a damn about them,” he said. “Regardless of what you’re trying to imply, my part in this is done. You want me to call our friend, see what’s going on with him, I’ll do it. But as a favor, not an obligation, you understand?”

  Teng paused.

  “Yes,” he said final
ly, his tone still soft. “Although you should remember the search for truth can be steered back on course as easily as it was diverted.”

  Vostov’s gut pulled in. These Asians made him edgy with their elliptical ways. “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “You need to reexamine your interests, my friend. It would be unfortunate if they suddenly came into collision with my own. The backers you so casually dismiss have a long reach, and an even longer memory for holding grudges.”

  Vostov felt his stomach tighten a little more. There was a sharp burning sensation in the center of it. Damn, he thought. His ulcers hadn’t acted up like this for ages.

  He tossed a glance over his shoulder at Svieta and Nadia. They were still whispering and tittering and seemed to be paying him no attention.

  Desire was a precarious and fickle sort of thing, he reflected. It could pull a man from the filthiest gutter to the top of the world, then push him right over into the abyss.

  “I’ll call our friend right now,” he said, and pushed the Disconnect button on the phone.

  Nadia moved closer to him then, hoping to distract him from the business of business, and refocus his attention on the business of pleasure. “Soon,” he said as he pushed her roughly away. “As soon as I finish dealing with this lamentable mess.” Then he turned his attention back to the phone. It rang—on the minister’s private line, so no secretary would remember the call. Five rings, and then he heard an irritated greeting. He responded in kind.

  “Hello, Mr. Minister,” he said.

  “Vostov? Are you insane, calling me at my office?”

  “I’ll make it brief.”

  “That isn’t the point. This connection isn’t secure—”

  “Listen to me, Minister. I don’t like politics, and I’m beginning to regret having gotten tangled up in this business. But men have to live with their choices.”