by Jack Mars
“Then why did you pick up the telephone?” Newsam said.
Luke glanced at Ed. That was a snappy answer. Ed didn’t seem like the debate team type, but he might have done well.
“You’ve been watching the news?” Luke said. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the radioactive waste that’s gone missing? We have reason to believe Mr. Nassar may know something about that.”
The man stared straight ahead. Luke smiled. He had just poisoned Nassar’s well. This doorman was a hub of communication. By tomorrow, every single person in the building was going to know the government had come to question Nassar about his terrorist activities.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the man began.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Luke said. “All you have to do is grant us access to the penthouse level. If you don’t, I will arrest you right now for obstruction of justice, and I will lead you away from here in handcuffs. I’m sure you don’t want that, and I don’t want to do it. So give us the key or the code or whatever it is, and then go on about your business. Also, know that if you tamper with the elevator once we are inside it, not only will I arrest you for obstruction, I will arrest you as an accessory after the fact to four murders, and the theft of hazardous materials. The judge will set bail at ten million dollars, and you will languish on Rikers Island awaiting trial for the next twelve months. Does that sound appealing to you…” Luke glanced at the man’s nameplate.
“John?”
*
“Were you really going to arrest that man?” Ed said.
It was a glass elevator, which moved through a round glass tube in the southwest corner of the building. As they rose, the view of the city became breathtaking, then dizzying. Soon, they could catch a vast sweep, the Empire State Building directly across from them, the United Nations building to their left. In the distance, a line of airplanes glinted in the early morning sun on their approach to LaGuardia Airport.
Luke smiled. “Arrest him for what?”
Ed giggled. The elevator kept moving, up and up.
“Man, I’m tired. I was just going to bed when Don called me.”
“I know,” Luke said. “Me too.”
Ed shook his head. “I haven’t done this round the clock thing in a while. I don’t miss it.”
The elevator reached the top floor. A warm tone sounded, and the doors slid open.
They stepped into a wide hallway. The floor was polished stone. Directly in front of them, ten yards ahead, two men stood. They were big men in suits, dark-skinned, perhaps Persian, perhaps some other ethnicity. They were blocking a set of double doors. Luke didn’t really care.
“Looks like our doorman called ahead.”
One of the men in the hall waved his hand. “No! You must go back. You cannot come here.”
“Federal agents,” Luke said. He and Ed walked toward the men.
“No! You have no jurisdiction. We refuse your entrance.”
“I guess I’m not going to bother showing them the badge,” Luke said.
“Yeah,” Ed said. “No reason to.”
“On my go, okay?”
“Sure.”
Luke waited a beat.
“Go.”
They were five feet from the men. Luke stepped up to his man and threw the first punch. He was surprised at how slow his own fist seemed to move. The man was five inches taller than Luke. He had the wingspan of a great bird. He blocked the punch easily and grabbed Luke’s wrist. He was strong. He pulled Luke closer.
Luke raised a knee to the groin, but the man blocked it with his leg. The man put a big hand to Luke’s throat. His fingers clenched like an eagle’s talons, digging into the vulnerable flesh.
With his free hand, his left, Luke jabbed him in the eyes. Index and middle fingers, one in each eye. It wasn’t a direct hit, but it did the job. The man let go of Luke and stepped backwards. His eyes watered. He blinked and shook his head. Then he smiled.
It was going to be a fight.
Then Newsam was there, sudden, like a ghost. He grabbed the man’s head in both hands, and banged it hard against the wall. The violence of it was profound. Some people banged an opponent’s head against the wall. Ed Newsam did it like he was trying to break through the wall using the man’s head.
Bang!
The man’s face winced.
Bang!
His jaw went slack.
Bang!
His eyes rolled.
Luke raised a hand. “Ed! Okay. I think you got him. He’s done. Let him down easy. These floors look like marble.”
Luke glanced at the other guard. He was already sprawled out on the ground, eyes closed, mouth open, head leaning against the wall. Ed had made short work of them both. Luke hadn’t made a dent.
Luke pulled a couple of plastic zip ties from his pocket and kneeled by his man. He bound the man’s ankles. He trussed them tight, like a prized pig. Eventually, someone would come and cut these things off. When they did, the guy probably wouldn’t have any feeling in his feet for an hour.
Ed was doing the same with his man.
“You’re a little rusty, Luke,” he said.
“Me? Nah. I’m not even supposed to fight. They hired me for my brains.” He could still feel the place on his throat where the man’s hand had been. It was going to be sore tomorrow.
Ed shook his head. “I was Delta Force, same as you. I came in two years after the Stanley Combat Outpost operation in Nuristan. People were still talking about it. How they dropped you guys up there and you got overrun. In the morning, only three men were still fighting. You were one of them, right?”
Luke grunted. “I’m not aware of the existence of…”
“Don’t bullshit me,” Ed said. “Classified or not, I know the story.”
Luke had learned to live his life in air-tight compartments. He rarely talked about the forward fire base incident. It took place a lifetime before, in a corner of eastern Afghanistan so remote that just putting some troops on the ground there was supposed to mean something. It was ancient history. His wife didn’t even know about it.
But Ed was Delta, so… okay.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was there. Bad intelligence put us up there, and it turned into the worst night of my life.” He gestured at the two men on the floor.
“It makes this look like an episode of Happy Days. We lost nine good men. Just before dawn, we ran out of ammo.” Luke shook his head. “It got ugly. Most of our guys were dead by then. And the three of us that made it… I don’t know if we ever really came back. Martinez is paralyzed from the waist down. Last I heard, Murphy is homeless, in and out of the VA psychiatric ward.”
“And you?”
“I have nightmares about it to this day.”
Ed was binding the wrists of his man. “I knew a guy who was on the clean-up detail after they cleared the area. He said they counted 167 bodies on that hill, not including our guys. There were 21 enemy hand-to-hand combat deaths inside the perimeter.”
Luke looked at him. “Why are you telling me this?”
Ed shrugged. “You’re a little rusty. No shame in admitting that. And you might be smart. And you might be small. But you’re also muscle, just like me.”
Luke barked laughter. “Okay. I’m rusty. But who you calling small?” He laughed, looking up at Ed’s enormous frame.
Ed laughed back. He searched the pockets of the man on the floor. In a few seconds, he found what he was looking for. It was a key card to the digital lock mounted on the wall next to the double doors.
“Shall we go inside?”
“After you,” Ed said.
Chapter 12
“You can’t be in here!” the man shouted. “Out! Get out of my home!”
They were standing in a wide open living area. There was a white baby grand piano in the far corner, near floor to ceiling windows with more spectacular views. Morning light streamed in. Nearby was a modern white sofa and table set, with accent chairs, clustered around a giant flat-panel TV m
ounted on the wall. On the opposite wall was a massive canvas, ten feet high, with crazy splotches and drips of bright color. Luke knew something about art. He guessed it was a Jackson Pollock.
“Yeah, we’ve been all through that with the guys out in the hall,” Luke said. “We can’t be here, and yet… here we are.”
The man was not tall. He was thick and stubby, and wearing a white plush robe. He was holding a large rifle and sighting down the barrel at them. It looked to Luke like an old Browning safari gun, probably loading .270 Winchester rounds. That thing would take down a moose at four hundred yards.
Luke moved to the right side of the room, Ed to the left. The man swung the rifle back and forth, unsure who to target.
“Ali Nassar?”
“Who is asking?”
“I’m Luke Stone. That’s Ed Newsam. We’re federal agents.”
Luke and Ed circled the man, moving in closer.
“I am a diplomat attached to the United Nations. You have no jurisdiction here.”
“We just want to ask you a couple of questions.”
“I’ve called the police. They will arrive in a few moments.”
“In that case, why don’t you put the gun down? Listen, it’s an old gun. You’ve got a bolt action on that thing. If you fire it once, you’ll never have time to chamber the next round.”
“Then I will kill you and let the other one live.”
He spun toward Luke. Luke kept moving along the wall. He put his hands up to show he was no threat. He’d had so many guns pointed at him in his life that he had long ago lost track of them all. Still, he didn’t feel good about this one. Ali Nassar didn’t look like much of a marksman, but if he did manage to get a shot off, it was going to put a big hole in something.
“If I were you, I’d kill that big man over there. Because if you kill me, there’s no telling what that guy’s gonna do. He likes me.”
Nassar didn’t waver. “No. I will kill you.”
Ed was already behind the man and within ten feet. He crossed the distance in a split second. He knocked the barrel of the gun upward, just as Nassar pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
The report was loud in the confines of the apartment. The shot tore a hole through the white plaster of the ceiling.
In one move, Ed snatched the gun away, punched Nassar in the jaw, and guided him to a seat in one of the accent chairs.
“Okay, sit down. Careful, please.”
Nassar was jolted by the punch. It took several seconds for his eyes to come back to center. He held a chubby hand to the red welt that was already rising on his jaw.
Ed showed Luke the rifle. “How about this thing?” It was ornate, with a pearl inlaid stock and polished barrel. It had probably been hanging on a wall somewhere a few minutes before.
Luke turned his attention to the man in the chair. He started from the beginning again.
“Ali Nassar?”
The man was pouting. He looked angry in the same way that Luke’s son Gunner used to look when he was four years old.
He nodded. “Obviously.”
Luke and Ed moved quickly, wasting no time.
“You can’t do this to me,” Nassar said.
Luke glanced at his watch. It was 7a.m. The cops could show up any minute.
They had him in an office just off the main living room. They had taken away Nassar’s robe. They had taken away his slippers. He wore tighty-whitey underwear and nothing else. His large stomach protruded. It was tight like a snare drum. They had him sitting in an armchair, his wrists zip-tied to the arms of the chair, his ankles zip-tied to the legs.
The office had a desk with an old-style tower computer and desktop monitor. The CPU was inside a thick steel box, which itself was anchored to the stone floor. There was no obvious way to open the box, no lock, no door, nothing. To get at the hard drive, a welder would have to cut the box. There wasn’t going to be any time for that.
Luke and Ed stood over Nassar.
“You have a numbered account at Royal Heritage Bank on Grand Cayman Island,” Luke said. “On March 3rd, you made a $250,000 transfer to an account held by a man named Ken Bryant. Ken Bryant was strangled to death sometime last night in an apartment in Harlem.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“You are the employer of a man named Ibrahim Abdulraman, who died this morning in a sub-basement of Center Medical Center. He was killed with a gunshot to the head while he was stealing radioactive material.”
A flicker of recognition passed across Nassar’s face.
“I do not know this man.”
Luke took a deep breath. Normally, he would have hours to interview a subject like this. Today he had minutes. That meant he might have to cheat a little.
“Why is your computer bolted to the floor?”
Nassar shrugged. He was beginning to regain his confidence. Luke could almost see it come flooding back. The man believed in himself. He thought he was going to stonewall them.
“There is a great deal of confidential material in there. I have clients who are engaged in business deals involving intellectual property. I am also, as I indicated, a diplomat assigned to the United Nations. I receive communications from time to time that are… how would you call it? Classified. I am in these positions because I am known for my discretion.”
“That may be,” Luke said. “But I’m going to need you to give me the password so I can take a look for myself.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
Behind Nassar, Ed laughed. It sounded like a grunt.
“You might be surprised at what’s possible,” Luke said. “The fact is, we’re going to access that computer. And you’re going to give us the password. Now, there’s an easy way to do this, and a hard way. The choice is up to you.”
“You won’t hurt me,” Nassar said. “You’re already in a great deal of trouble.”
Luke glanced at Ed. Ed moved over and kneeled by Nassar’s right side. He took Nassar’s right hand in his two powerful hands.
Luke and Ed had met for the first time late last night, but they were already starting to work together without verbal communication. It was like they were reading each other’s minds. Luke had experienced this before, usually with guys who had been in special operations units like Delta. The relationship usually took longer to develop.
“You play that piano in there?” Luke said.
Nassar nodded. “I’m classically trained. When I was young, I was a concert pianist. I still play a bit for fun.”
Luke crouched down so he was at eye level with Nassar.
“In a moment, Ed is going to start breaking your fingers. That’ll make it hard to play the piano. And it’s going to hurt, probably quite a bit. I’m not sure it’s the kind of pain a man like you is accustomed to.”
“You won’t do it.”
“The first time, I’m going to count to three. That will give you a last few seconds to decide what you want to do. Unlike you, we warn people before we hurt them. We don’t steal radioactive material and aim to kill millions of innocent people. Hell, you’ll be getting off easy compared to what you’re doing to the others. But after the first time, there won’t be any more warnings. I’ll just look at Ed, and he’ll break another finger. Do you understand?”
“I will have your job,” Nassar said.
“One.”
“You are a little man with no power. You will regret ever coming here.”
“Two.”
“Don’t you dare!”
“Three.”
Ed broke Nassar’s pinky at the second knuckle. He did it quickly, with very little effort. Luke heard the crunch, just before Nassar screamed. The pinky bent out sideways. There was something almost obscene about the angle.
Luke put his hand under Nassar’s chin and tilted his head up. Nassar’s teeth were gritted. His face was flushed and his breath came in gasps. But his eyes were hard.
“That was just the pinky,”
Luke said. “The next one is the thumb. Thumbs hurt a lot more than pinkies. Thumbs are more important, too.”
“You are animals. I will tell you nothing.”
Luke glanced at Ed. Ed’s face was hard. He shrugged and broke the thumb. This time it made a loud cracking sound.
Luke stood up and let the man shriek for a moment. The sound was ear-splitting. He could hear it echoing through the apartment, like something from a horror movie. Maybe they should find a hand towel in the kitchen to use as a gag.
He paced the room. He didn’t enjoy this sort of thing. It was torture, he understood that. But the man’s fingers would heal. If a dirty bomb went off on a subway train, many people would die. The survivors would get sick. No one would ever heal. Weighing the two, the man’s fingers and dead people on a train, the decision was easy.
Nassar was crying now. Clear mucus ran from one of his nostrils. He was breathing crazily. It sounded like huh-huh-huh-huh.
“Look at me,” Luke said.
The man did as he was told. His eyes were no longer hard.
“I see the thumb got your attention. So we’ll take the left thumb next. After that, we’ll start on the teeth. Ed?”
Ed moved around to the man’s left.
“Kahlil Gibran,” Nassar gasped.
“What’s that? I didn’t hear you.”
“Kahlil underscore Gibran. It’s the password.”
“Like the author?” Luke said.
“Yes.”
“And what is it to work with love?” Ed said, quoting Gibran.
Luke smiled. “It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your own heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. We have that on our kitchen wall at home. I love that stuff. I guess we’re just three incurable romantics here.”
Luke went to the computer and ran his finger across the touchpad. The password box came up. He typed in the words.
Kahlil_Gibran
The desktop screen appeared. The wallpaper was a photo of snow-capped mountains, with yellow and green meadows in the foreground.
“Looks like we’re in business. Thanks, Ali.”
Luke slipped an external hard drive he had gotten from Swann out of the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. He plugged it into a USB port. The external drive had huge capacity. It should easily swallow this man’s entire computer. They could worry later about breaking any encryption.