by Lou Dobbs
Fannie couldn’t sleep and decided to explore Tartu, the second-largest city in the country, but more of a quaint town by Western standards. It had none of the traffic of Berlin or Stuttgart and none of the elegance of Paris, but it didn’t have tourists or smog, either. It was almost as if it hadn’t ever left the old Soviet Union’s influence. Beat-up Voleex hatchbacks and Yugos sputtered along the narrow streets, and heavy people with no regard for fashion shuffled along the broken sidewalks.
Fannie had to admit it felt a little bit like a slap in the face to go from planning large financial transactions to acting as an escort for some Russian army officer. The only consolation was that Amir had to feel even worse about it. His father had fought against the Russians in Afghanistan as a foreign fighter, and Amir had no use for either of the world’s major powers.
An alliance with Russia made sense even if it did go against the group’s long-term goals. For years Russia had been a target of jihadists. There was no great love for the former empire. But the group’s progress against the U.S. had been slow. An occasional success would be met with a massive military response. It could be devastating.
The other issue was developing leaders. Once someone established himself as an inspirational leader or tactical genius, the U.S. had an uncanny ability to find him and strike, either through a drone or the feared U.S. Navy SEALs.
This new alliance with Russia, no matter how distasteful, would draw U.S. resources away from the Middle East and ultimately help their cause. That was all that mattered to Fannie.
She also realized the importance of Estonia to a country like Russia. Not only did they share a border, but Estonia was technologically advanced, at least as far as Internet infrastructure and computers. Far more so than Russia. Anyone with common sense recognized the next phase of global conflict would include serious cyberattacks. Already it was viewed as the only recourse for countries like North Korea. They couldn’t hit the U.S. with missiles yet, so they harassed major U.S. corporations with sophisticated cyberattacks and disrupted credit and banking by stealing credit card numbers from retailers.
Estonia could be the piece of the puzzle Russia needed. Fannie didn’t care what Russia did, as long as its first act was to hurt the United States. That would start the Islamic revolution she was praying for in Europe. If the U.S. couldn’t help, Europe was as defenseless as a baby.
*
Derek Walsh was startled by hearing his name and feeling someone bump into him. He almost darted back onto his own street but remembered the young man in the Dodge waiting for him. He turned quickly and released a breath of relief when he realized it was his friend Charlie, the Vietnam vet.
Charlie said, “What are you doing home in the middle of the day? You didn’t get fired, did you?”
Walsh regained his senses, blinked hard, and said, “No, no, nothing like that.” He paused for a moment, staring at Charlie and recognizing one of his old shirts. It looked good on the older man. He had trimmed his gray beard and smelled like he had taken a shower recently. Walsh thought for a moment and said, “Charlie, can you help me out?”
“Anything for a fellow vet. What do you need?”
“I’d like to get into my apartment, but there’s someone watching it. It’s a young guy in the Dodge across the street.”
Charlie took a moment to do some recon like the former Ranger he was. He stepped back from around the corner and said, “Have you checked all sides of the building?”
Walsh shook his head. He liked that Charlie asked no questions. He was just ready to help.
Charlie said, “Give me a few minutes. I’ll meet you in the corner grocery store. They don’t mind me coming in there, and they won’t notice you.”
Walsh followed the instructions and hustled down the street to the store owned by a young Korean couple. He used it sometimes to buy fresh fruit and milk. They greeted him like always, with a pleasant smile. He felt awkward lingering as long as he did, but no one seemed to notice, and finally, after nearly ten minutes, Charlie stepped into the store and greeted the young couple by name. Then he stepped directly back to Walsh and wasted no time. “There’s no one in back of your apartment. The guy in the front is definitely watching your building. He must not expect you to be sneaky. But I guess with no way to get in the back, he’d only watch your front door. Just follow my lead and we’ll get you in there, no problem.”
*
Major Bill Shepherd had seen protests before. Many of the marine officers in Europe had commanded embassy security details and seen how people could get stirred up about events halfway across the world. Even if they weren’t targeting the United States, he had studied crowds of protesters in front of other embassies. He had once seen a protest in front of the Israeli embassy in London that taught him how ugly these things could get. It was the typical, uninformed protest against so-called Israeli violence against Palestinians, which was actually self-defense. The London police had allowed a number of people to hide their faces, not just in traditional Muslim headgear but with ski masks and Guy Fawkes masks as well. Walsh had seen how that emboldened people, and soon there were a number of bottles of urine and red paint slung over the wall at the Israeli soldiers guarding the embassy. When the London police tried to stop this, the crowd turned on them and other bystanders. Before it was over, two little girls had been seriously injured by the protesters, and the London police had been forced to use tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Here in Germany it was a more complex situation. It was clear to the protesters, as well as the soldiers guarding the front of the base, that no one was going to get on the property. Any idiot could see that the soldiers with their rifles and ballistic shields could withstand just about anything the protesters threw at them. The responsibility really fell at the feet of the German police, and there were not nearly enough on the fringes of the crowd to control them if things got ugly. That would mean U.S. military personnel would have to take action, and that was the sort of thing that drew media attention.
Shepherd didn’t want to undercut the army commander, but his marines had had more experience with this at the embassy. It didn’t take much to convince the young army captain to let the marines step to the front of the defenders. Shepherd was right there with them, scanning the crowd. It was a mix of people, but most of them appeared to be under thirty. The crowd was close to two hundred and growing as cars came down the main road. He was shocked so many people would be out in the middle of the night. But the news covering the financial meltdown in Europe and the U.S., as well as pointing the finger toward one specific U.S. firm, Thomas Brothers Financial, had stirred the public up, and young people with nothing to do could easily enough find trouble.
Most of his marines were behind shields, and everyone had a helmet on. A bottle sailed out of the crowd and shattered harmlessly twenty feet in front of them. Shepherd looked to each side of the crowd to see if the police would react in any way. They looked nervous and ready to flee rather than prepared to keep the peace.
A blond man shouting in English with a German accent edged away from the crowd and closer to Shepherd. “We’re not going to let the U.S. ruin our economy. We’re not going to let the U.S. continue to occupy our country,” he yelled. “You must go. You must go.” The last part was chanted and immediately picked up by the rest of the protesters. A crushingly loud “You must go” pounded in Shepherd’s ears.
Shepherd looked along the line and could see that his marines were getting anxious and itching to point their rifles. He said in an even voice, “Stay calm, they’re just blowing off some steam.”
He could tell there was more behind this protest. He just didn’t want his marines to make it worse. They stayed in line right at the gate. The crowd surged forward, and the blond guy who was leading the chant came face-to-face with Shepherd.
The younger man smirked and said, “America is done. You will see your world burn.”
11
Walsh had found it comforting to talk with the h
omeless vet. It made him feel like he was doing something proactive. He had to look at Charlie with a sideways glance. This was all beyond him. He had never been involved in any sort of cloak-and-dagger activity. He had always been a financial guy, even in the marines. And now a homeless Vietnam vet was telling him how he would distract the man watching in front of Walsh’s apartment, giving Walsh time to slip into the building. All it required was Walsh sneaking behind the first building on the block and coming up between that building and his own. Then, when Charlie distracted the man in the car, Walsh could slide into his apartment unnoticed.
He had a hundred questions. First and foremost, how would Charlie distract him? Then how would he get back out without being seen? What would happen if he was caught? Was the man dangerous? Did he look like a cop? Instead, he just stared at Charlie and mumbled, “Okay.”
Walsh had to scale a short, decorative fence to get behind the building on the corner. He felt obvious and vulnerable walking through someone else’s backyard, but no one seemed to notice him or look out a window. There was a gate at the other side, one he had seen from his own building. He walked through it and found himself in the shadows between the two buildings, looking almost directly at the Dodge parked on the side of the road. The sounds of the earlier riots seem to drift lightly on the breeze, but he could hear everything on the street, including Charlie as he slowly approached the car.
Walsh’s heart rate started to climb, and for the first time he realized he was also worried about Charlie’s safety. What if this guy did something to the old man? Walsh would have to take action. He hoped he was prepared.
He crept up to the corner of the building and now could see and hear Charlie as he approached the man in the car and had his full attention. Walsh was afraid the man would notice him as he stepped onto the sidewalk and made a few quick steps to the stairs leading up to his building.
He heard Charlie say, “Hello, sir. I was wondering if you had some spare change.” Charlie approached him as if he had some disability, hunched over and dragging his right leg behind him.
The man mumbled something hostile back toward Charlie.
The old vet said, “That’s no way to talk to a senior citizen.” And then, with startling speed, Charlie lurched toward the man, striking him across the chin and slamming his head hard into the dash of the Dodge Charger. He pulled the man back upright, and his head lulled to the right of the seat. Charlie turned and gave Walsh a thumbs-up.
Stunned by what he had witnessed, Walsh darted around the corner and rushed up the stairs.
*
Joseph Katazin was a little concerned. He’d lost track of Walsh. While the man was in custody he wasn’t worried about it, but now he’d escaped from the Seventh Precinct, and the New York cops couldn’t care less. They had plenty of problems on their hands with the chaos that Katazin had helped spread.
His contacts were associated with the Seventh Precinct, not the FBI. He knew the federal agents would be looking for Walsh, but even they would be more concerned about the lone wolf terror attacks that were occurring across the country. He could imagine a supervisor yelling at the agent who wanted to look for Walsh when the world was falling down around them. The FBI really wasn’t any different than any other police agency around the world. Once you understood how they operated they weren’t that hard to outsmart.
Katazin had used his own small army of associates to spread out and look for Walsh. None of them knew exactly what was going on, and that was the point. He didn’t trust any of them to keep their mouths shut if they were arrested for some reason. They were simply thugs used by the Russian mafia and available for hire whenever Katazin needed them. There really weren’t that many places he thought Walsh would go, but he had people waiting at all of them while he headed to the most obvious.
Walsh was starting to annoy him. Katazin would enjoy questioning him roughly and then dumping him in the East River. By the time anyone linked him to all the other things that were going on, the world would have a very different look.
*
Walsh had been so nervous he could barely fit the key into the lock of his loose wooden door. Finally he managed to open the door silently and stood in the doorway, peering into the room. His eyes scanned from one corner to the other even though he had no idea what he was looking for. He just didn’t need another surprise. If there was someone out front, there might be someone inside. He had to risk it. He stepped in quickly, ready to leap back out if necessary. It wasn’t. The room was quiet and empty of other humans.
The apartment was a joke except for the comfortable bed. It was essentially a bedroom that had been cut into two rooms, plus a tiny bathroom and a kitchen that consisted of a dorm refrigerator and toaster oven. In other cities it would be considered a slum. The small closet, which was just a recess in the wall, held four blue suits. The main thing distinguishing them was the manufacturer, and all of them were knock-offs. What was wrong with him? Was he color-blind? Or had he just fallen into the corporate stereotype of wearing a blue suit with a different tie every day?
For no apparent reason he changed from the blue pants he was wearing into a different set of blue pants. He changed shirts as well, but decided not to grab a coat. He felt more casual having an untucked white shirt hanging over his dark blue pants.
Walsh caught a quick glimpse of himself in the mirror as he passed the open bathroom door. He thought for the first time about having cops looking for him. He was an escaped fugitive even if he was never officially charged. He thought about how Mike Rosenberg had once told him that few people actually looked at faces during the day, and that was how people on most-wanted lists remained free for so long. Just the same, Walsh decided he could change his look a little.
He took a minute to step up to the mirror, grab his electric grooming razor, and quickly shave the top of his head. After a remarkably short time he had given himself a classic male-pattern bald spot, with the sides trimmed back a little as well. He used a twin-bladed razor to finish up.
When he had finished he looked fifteen years older.
On his way out, he looked through one of the three drawers on the cabinet in the kitchen and found his envelope with six hundred dollars in cash, his current life savings. He also grabbed Alena’s extra debit card and a pair of low-power “cheater” reading glasses he had found he needed more and more frequently. Once he put them on, in combination with his homemade bald spot, he looked completely different.
He didn’t want to linger, even though he’d have liked to turn on the TV and see what was happening in the financial district. It was late afternoon, and there were still police sirens wailing in the distance.
He locked the apartment on the way out and paused before he stepped out onto the stairs. He looked through the glass in the doors and saw Charlie still standing casually by the Dodge. He came out the door, saw the driver slumped over in the front seat, and rushed over to the homeless army vet.
As Walsh approached, Charlie looked up. Then he grinned and said, “Nice look. Very smart.”
Walsh looked at the unconscious man and said, “Charlie, what the hell? I thought you were going to distract him.”
“He is distracted. His concussion has distracted him.”
“I sure hope he was watching my apartment and not waiting for his girlfriend.”
“I’m pretty sure he was watching your apartment.”
“How do you know?”
Charlie held up a photograph of Walsh. It looked like it had been taken in the last few weeks when he was leaving his office. It was from a distance, but it was still clearly him.
Walsh said, “Do you have anything else?”
Charlie handed him a 9 mm Beretta, a cell phone, and a wallet. “I kept the cash in his wallet. I figured I earned that. The rest might be information you need.”
Walsh didn’t argue. He took the gun and shoved it in his belt, then pulled the shirt over it. He looked at the wallet for a moment and saw the guy’s name: Serge Bla
ttkoff. He looked up at Charlie. “A Russian.”
“I never trusted those bastards.”
*
Mike Rosenberg had gone all the way out to his car in the headquarters parking lot and tried calling his friend Derek Walsh, but he got no answer on the cell phone. Then he read a brief that said Derek was a suspect in the money transfer that started much of the chaos going on right now. His unit was designed to get a big picture of what was going on in the world. That gave him access to a lot of files and a lot of information, but he wasn’t an expert on any of it. He was pretty good at tracking down the source of money and the original source of some communications. But his forte was gaining a view of the big picture. He decided it wouldn’t help him or Walsh if he let it slip that they were friends. Right now no one was paying much attention to the banker in New York who was being questioned by the FBI. Then he read another brief that came over the computer. It was saying Walsh had escaped from custody and was loose somewhere in New York. With the growing violence and several terror attacks around Manhattan, very few people cared about a banker who managed to escape from the FBI.
Rosenberg was worried, and he hoped no one would make a connection between his phone and Walsh’s. God knew there were enough calls between them. Until someone said something, he intended to look into it more closely and see what he could find out. There was no way Derek Walsh was ever involved in something illegal; something stupid, maybe, especially if it involved a woman, but illegal, never.
The first thing he did was find an analyst to talk to about the money transfer that had gone from Thomas Brothers Financial to a bank in Switzerland. He wanted to know who had access to that account and see what he could find out from there.