He had been freezing his rear end off for the past five minutes, listening to Tommy Boccigualupo, the dockyard foreman, argue with his pal about a question that had been posed on the quiz show they were watching on Tommy’s small color TV. Behind him on the Twelfth Avenue wharf, hydraulic winches hissed and forklifts clanked as cargo was shuttled between ship holds and wide-load semis. There were a couple of pigeons squabbling with a dirty seagull over a pizza crust near the piles to Lenny’s right. Beyond them, the sky and the river merged in a smear of gray.
Lenny heard a jubilant commotion of bells, whistles, and contestant screeches from the television. They seemed to jangle off the corrugated walls of the hut. Somebody on the program had apparently won something.
“Aw crap, Len,” Boch said. “You made us miss the answer.”
“Sorry.” Lenny gave the coil heater beside Tommy’s chair a longing glance. “It all right if I come in?”
“Sure, mi shithole es su shithole,” Boch said. He motioned to a sofa with sunken Herculon cushions. Lenny remembered having dumped one just like it around 1974.
He sat. Springs creaked, groaned, and poked into his bottom. The armrest felt as if it had absorbed a large quantity of used motor oil at some point in its long life. Still, the warmth from the heater had quickly taken the chill out of his bones, and he couldn’t help but be appreciative.
“How’s the son?” Boch said, rotating his swivel chair toward Lenny.
“He took the purple streaks out of his hair last week, started wearing what they call dreadlocks instead. Like those guys in Jamaica.” Lenny spread his hands haplessly. “Gets straight As in school, though, so what can I say?”
Boch grunted his commiseration, smoothed his palm over his brilliantined hair. “My oldest daughter, Theresa, she’s pregnant with her second. Husband’s a slacker, capisce? I don’t know whether to congratulate him or break his fucking kneecaps.”
Lenny leaned down and wriggled his fingers in front of the heater.
“Kids,” he said, shaking his head.
“Kids,” Boch repeated. He sighed. “What can I do for you, Len? ’Cause if this is about another rush job for UpLink, you’re outta luck. The Port Authority’s been wrapping the red tape around my balls since the bombing ...”
“Nothing like that.” Lenny gave him a significant glance and tipped his head toward the other man in the Quonset, who was still watching the game show.
Boch nodded. “Joe,” he said.
The guy wrenched his eyes from the tube. “Yeah?”
“Get out there and check on that shipment from Korea,” Boch said, pointing out his window at the dock. “Remind the boys I want it at the warehouse before they knock off for the day.”
“Sure,” Joe said.
“And Joe?”
“Yeah?”
“Then go get us some coffees.”
“Sure.”
Joe buttoned his mackinaw and left.
Boch waited until he was out of earshot and turned back to Lenny.
“So,” he said. “Talk.”
“Friend of mine in Customs tells me an outfit called Mercury Distribution has a lot of merchandise come in at this yard. Received a shipment from Russia maybe a month, month and half back.”
He paused. Boch made an indeterminate sound, gestured for him to continue.
“I need the skinny on Mercury,” Lenny said. “It legit, or what?”
Boch looked at him. “Why you asking?”
“Because my boss asked me to ask,” Lenny said.
A moment passed.
Boch kept looking at him.
“They been saying on the news it might be Russkies did that number in Times Square,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“And now you come in with your questions about Mercury.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Boch said.
“Me neither, but I swear I don’t know any more than I’m telling you,” Lenny said. “I’m doing this on faith, Boch.”
There was another silence. Boch meshed his knuckles on his lap, glanced down at them, cracked them.
“Mercury’s run by a hood name of Nick Roma,” he said, finally. “Don’t let the handle fool you, he’s no goombah. Can call himself anything he wants, still stinks like fucking borscht to me.”
Lenny nodded. “What kind of stuff he import?”
“Ain’t my lookout,” Boch said. “I got to stay healthy for the wife’s sake, you know?”
Lenny nodded again, rose from the couch, moved toward the entryway, turned to face Boccigualupo. Though he was still inside, he could feel the cold seeping back into him as he moved farther from the emission of the heater.
“I owe you one,” he said. “And FYI, the answer to that question on the game show was ‘Richard Burton.’ ”
“Thanks, I’ll make sure Joe finds out,” Boch said. He chewed his upper lip. “And you tell your boss to be careful, Len. These are dangerous people he’s messing with.”
Lenny took a step closer to the door, then paused half in and half out of it. On the dock, the seagull had won its competition with the tag team of pigeons and was triumphantly shaking the pizza crust in its beak. The sky seemed a little grayer than it did before.
“I’ll tell him,” he said.
Gordian buzzed Nimec in his office at three P.M.
“Good news,” he said. “I just heard from our man Reisenberg.”
Nimec’s fingers tightened around the receiver.
“He’s got the material?”
“Scads of it. Or so he says,” Gordian said. “You want me to have him FedEx it to us?”
Nimec considered that a moment. FedEx was normally reliable, but even they had been known to misplace the occasional package—and this was one shipment that couldn’t afford to go awry. Nimec didn’t know where Lenny had gotten the information from, but he knew someone would be in trouble if word got out that he or she was leaking information like this. Besides, he thought, if he was going to have another sleepless night, he might as well spend it packing his travel bag.
“No,” he said. “I think I’d better fly into New York tomorrow morning.”
There was a brief silence before Gordian commented.
“Something tells me you’ve been wearing out your carpet again, Pete,” he said.
Nimec stopped pacing.
“Goes to show how little you know about your employees,” he said.
Gordian grinned, but sobered quickly. “Is your team ready to go, Pete?”
“Always,” Nimec said. “On a moment’s notice.”
“Good,” Gordian said. “Because a moment may be all we get.”
Nimec nodded. “I’ll put ’em on alert,” he said. “And then I think I’ll go pack.”
Pressing the button on his phone, he disconnected from Gordian and then punched in the first phone number.
TWENTY-SIX
NEW YORK CITY JANUARY 16, 2000
AS LEGEND GOES, WHEN ALEXANDER THE GREAT WAS presented with the riddle of undoing the Gordian knot, he simply severed it with a blow of his sword rather than ponder its intricate twists and turns. Problem solved, according to Alexander, who was always pragmatic and direct.
When Roger Gordian, Megan Breen, and Peter Nimec had conceived of a troubleshooting and crisis-control team within UpLink, the idea to name it Sword had flashed into Megan’s mind as naturally as a beam of sunshine piercing the clouds on a midsummer morning. The play on Roger’s last name seemed exceedingly appropriate, given how his own realistic, determined approach to tackling obstacles paralleled that of Alexander.
Sword was, in effect, his answer to modern Gordian knots: a global special intelligence network that relied on a combination of risk management and scenario planning to anticipate most outbreaks of trouble, defusing them before they threatened international peace and stability, his country’s interests, or the interests of his firm—all three of which generally coincided.
This did not
, however, mean Sword was without physical resources in the event things got rough. Comprised of hundreds of men and women who had been carefully screened by Nimec, and hired away from police and intelligence agencies around the world, its security arm could aggressively do whatever it took to handle dangerous, and even violent, situations. The organizational and operational framework upon which Nimec had built this force was clear, consistent, and almost elegant in its simplicity: for maximum secrecy and effectiveness, regional offices were to be established separately from UpLink’s corporate locations; members of the group were to be based in areas with which they had close personal or professional familiarity; and field teams were to abide by the laws of the nations to which they were assigned, employing non-lethal weapons whenever possible.
Right now, Nimec was thinking that his local section chief, Tony Barnhart, had followed every one of those guidelines to the letter, giving him high confidence that their operation would go off according to plan in spite of the wicked nor’easter that was slamming the area.
The turn-of-the century meat packing factory that had been converted into Sword’s New York headquarters was inconspicuously tucked away between Hudson and Dowar streets in Soho, a part of downtown Manhattan whose name not only reflected its position on the city map—which was south of Houston Street—but was also a nod to the renowned London theatrical district from the neighborhood’s large artsy population. In the old days, before the onslaught of the high-rises, someone looking out the French doors that gave onto the building’s third-story terrace could have seen the Washington Square Arch amid the twisting streets of Greenwich Village, and Gramercy Park to the north, and farther uptown the Empire State Building towering resolutely above an agglomeration of more modern—and less graceful—basalt-and-glass sky-scrapers. These days, however, the old landmarks were invisible, all but buried in a sea of newer, taller buildings.
Tonight even this skyline had been blotted out by the storm, and Nimec saw nothing but thick curtains of mixed rain and snow charged with pyrotechnic lightning.
Turning from the balcony, he let his eyes tour the room where Barnhart and his teammate, Noriko Cousins, were quietly engaged in last-minute preparations, with fitted black tactical hoods pulled back behind their necks. The room had been done up in shades of gray and white, the fireplace surrounded by marble tiles, no mantel or hearth, very sleek and spare. The crackling flame threw a soft orange glow across the pile carpet, the plump white sofa, and the wall panel that had fulcrumed open at the touch of a hidden button, revealing the equipment cache from which Nimec had extracted the tools and weapons they would be using on their break-in.
Laid out across Barnhart’s lap was a Benelli semiautomatic combat shotgun with a rubber-coated pistol grip, nonreflecting synthetic black finish, and barrel-mounted target light. The tubular magazine he had slapped into its stock contained six 12-gauge sabots, each of which would peel away upon firing to release a fin-stabilized CS tear-gas bomblet. In pouches on the nylon utility harness worn over his chest were a half-dozen additional magazines filled with rubber stingball cartridges, blunt-impact foam rounds, incendiary rounds, and other types of disabling and distraction projectiles. Also attached to the crisscrossing straps of his rig were pen-shaped aerosol canisters of dimethyl sulfoxide, or DMSO, a chemical sedative which human skin would rapidly absorb like a sponge. There was a high-voltage taser baton in the scabbard clipped to his belt.
Cross-legged on the floor, Noriko was carefully arranging her lockpicking tools on the tabletop, her black hair in a tight ponytail, her dark Asian eyes narrowed in concentration. Holstered at her hip was a Foster-Miller suppression weapon she called her webshooter, after the device used by the Spiderman comic book character. About the size of a flare gun, it discharged filament-thin netting coated with a polymer superglue. On the carpet to her right was a lightweight jamb spreader that looked something like a car jack, which she would strap over her shoulder and use only if doorway entry became more a matter of speed than stealth.
Beside her on the floor, within easy reach, was the hard plastic capsule of a Saber laser-dazzler. Before they moved out, the last thing she would do was to insert the Saber into a 40mm grenade launcher, itself fitted beneath the barrel of an M16 rifle. A targeting control box for the optical weapon was snapped to the underside of the grenade tube. The ammunition she had fed into the gun’s banana clip consisted of 5.56mm bullets encased within .50-caliber plastic sabots. Fired at a low muzzle speed from the specially designed VVRS upper receiver, the sabots would remain in place as blunt, less-than-lethal cushions. At a higher velocity they would split apart to release the deadly metal rounds within them.
Nimec smiled a little. It was all so very high-tech, wasn’t it? A far cry from some of the improvised SpecOp gear he’d carried way back when. But old habits died hard and he was still something of a traditionalist. He would go in carrying smoke and flash-bang grenades, OC spray canisters, and his 9mm Beretta—loaded with standard ammo in case lethal force was needed despite his intentions to the contrary.
He checked his watch.
It was seven-forty-five, almost time to roll.
“You think Roma’s going to stick to his routine even in that mess?” he said to Barnhart, nodding his head back to indicate the sheets of wintry precipitation outside the sliding doors.
Barnhart glanced over at him.
“Unless Nicky’s snowed in to his ears, he’ll stay true to form,” he said.
“Let’s just hope there’s something in his office we can use,” Noriko said without looking up from her tools.
Nimec nodded. He slipped his hand into his trouser pocket, crossed his fingers out of sight.
“Let’s,” he said.
TWENTY-SEVEN
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK JANUARY 16, 2000
THE SKY OUTSIDE THE WINDOW WAS A BLUR OF FALLING snow. It blew in rippling cataracts, tinged eerily pink by the vapor light across the street.
Putting his cordless phone back on its base, Nick Roma cursed inwardly. He could hear the wind keening outside, hurling flakes against the pane like fistfuls of sand. Although the rain that had soaked the pavement earlier had delayed any accumulation, he knew the city would be buried under mountains of white by morning.
Well, Nick thought, he had enough to worry about without letting the weather get to him. Better to look ahead toward what was in store. A moment ago on the phone, Marissa had said that she missed him. Why hadn’t he been in touch?
It was good to keep them wondering. She would be generous with her affection tonight, would want to make sure he hadn’t tired of her. And if expenses, not sex, were on her mind as she arched against him, so what? The maintenance on the Shore Road co-op in which he kept her was nearly two thousand dollars a month. And then there was the small fortune she spent on clothes and trinkets. Money was what moved her to passion—although she gave as well as she got. As in any fair deal, each party came away satisfied.
Rising from behind his desk, he went to the coatrack, took his Armani sport coat off the hanger, and slipped it on. Then he stood in front of the mirror, smoothing and combing. Let the snow come down. Let the city choke on it. He would spend tomorrow luxuriating in soft, warm flesh.
Satisfied with his appearance, he returned to his desk. In a plastic bag beside it were two bottles of Pinot Noir. A French label—the American vintages didn’t even belong in the same class.
He glanced at the dial of his watch. Ten minutes to eleven. It was Sunday and the nightclub downstairs was closed. And as usual on Sunday nights, Nick had been at the office to meet with his captains, receive his skim, give them instructions, mediate their disputes, and so forth. Most had grumbled about having to come out in the storm, but they didn’t have any idea what it was like to stand in his shoes. He believed in keeping tight control of all his projects. Anybody who didn’t was asking for chaos.
That, of course, was the problem with his participation in what had been done New Year’s Eve. So much of it had been
out of his hands from the beginning. And then there was the business of the satchel charge, the one that hadn’t gone off. He had suspected even before the press leaks that something like that had happened. The earliest stories on the news had mentioned only three explosions following the initial blast, and at the time he had optimistically hoped they were wrong. But he’d had his lingering doubts, and day by day the hard evidence had mounted, eventually becoming conclusive. Three explosions. Not four. This according to every eyewitness, every inch of video footage, every photograph taken at the scene. When the story surfaced that an undetonated bomb had been discovered and given over to the FBI for testing, he’d known it was all true. And had gotten to thinking. Could that possibly have been what Gilea and her people wanted? And if so, why? He’d been aware that they meant to throw a wrench into certain political developments between the United States and Russia ... but his biggest mistake had been to distance himself from the intricacies of their plan, and therefore remain half-blind to its intended outcome. Had he been caught up in a scheme that was more devious than he’d guessed? And if so, might it be that he was to be sacrificed as part of it?
It seemed like a lot of wild imagination ... but before the first of the year, the same might have been said about a bombing on the scale of what had occurred in Times Square. Suppose he’d been set up to take the heat? He had to wonder about that, in spite of how Gilea had acted toward him the night of the attack, and what they had done together afterward, done right here in his office ... or maybe because of it. She had been all over him that night. It had been as though she were on fire. As though the flames that had killed those hundreds of people had brought about an unquenchable heat of a different sort inside her body. He didn’t know how else to describe it. Gilea, Gilea. Here and then disappeared. What was he to make of her? A woman like that was capable of anything. Anything in the world.
And say he was getting carried away with his suspicions? Admittedly, he’d been on edge for the past couple of weeks. Say he was getting carried away, and he hadn’t been used as a pawn in some treacherous game, and the failure of the bomb to detonate was strictly an accident. Would the fact that it had nothing to do with Gilea’s planning make the position he was in right now any better? It didn’t have to be that he’d been double-crossed. Things went wrong, and people went down as a consequence. What had been worrying him was the possibility that analysis of the explosives would lead to a connection between the distributor and his import company. He was no expert when it came to the science, but he knew that might be done with certain kinds of testing. The authorities would want badly to make an arrest. How might the evidence be stacking up against him? He wasn’t sure yet, couldn’t be sure. But he wasn’t going to just stand around and wait for a gigantic fist to come crashing through his wall.
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