Escape

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  "What about a missile attack from the outside?" Newbury had suggested. She had dismissed that idea. "We'd have to get into another building just as well-protected to shoot directly across," she said. "And, of course, the target has to be destroyed at the exact right moment, or the plan will not work. No, the only way to do this is to gain access to the interior." Malovo was just about to reconsider renewing her affair with the janitorial services owner—at least he could get her inside the building and perhaps buy her enough time to take the security forces by surprise—when Newbury provided the key to the castle. His people had discovered that although SAIC took care of security for the specific floor that she was targeting, a good, but less sophisticated firm handled security for the rest of the building.

  Newbury's information had led her to the security manager for the day shift. Leonard "Leo" Sipowitz was a fifty-year-old ex-Marine trapped in a— as he described it to her on their first date—"passionless marriage." Newbury's source told her what bar Sipowitz liked to stop in for a drink on the way home to Yonkers and pointed him out to her as he was leaving the building. She'd wandered into the bar one day, apparently on the verge of tears, and made sure she was close to where he was sitting when she whimpered that she had a flat tire and didn't know how to fix it.

  As expected, the ex-Marine was the sort to come to the rescue of a damsel in distress, especially if she was wearing a short skirt and a tight blouse. "Where are you from?" Sipowitz asked as he finished changing the tire.

  "Brighton Beach," she replied, applying the accent that American men found irresistible.

  Sipowitz laughed. "I meant originally."

  "Oh, forgive me, my English is not so good. I am from Chechnya. You know of it?"

  "Sure," he replied. "Part of the old Soviet Union. I didn't know there were such beautiful women in Chechnya."

  "And I did not know that American men could be so charming," she said, blushing prettily. "Or so handsome."

  Soon they were carrying on a torrid affair, meeting in hotel rooms, parks, and the back seats of cars all over the Five Boroughs. As far as Sipowitz was concerned, she was the perfect mistress. She told him that she had just gotten out of a mail-order bride marriage to an ugly older man "who beat me and made me perform unnatural acts." However, she was willing to give some of those acts a "second chance" because of her love for Sipowitz. The failed marriage had turned her off from starting anything permanent; she didn't want him to leave his wife, nor was she demanding in respect to expensive gifts. She was, indeed, perfect.

  At first, he wouldn't talk much about his work. He said only that he was a "muckity-muck" with a security firm with "a lot of very important clients." She said she found his line of work very sexy. "It makes me hot," she purred and demonstrated what she meant.

  That was how Sipowitz learned that "Natalie" had this thing for making love in unusual places, and that the chance of getting caught turned her on. Soon a ride in an elevator was an excuse for a quickie, supplemented by hand-jobs beneath the tablecloth at expensive restaurants. She'd even managed fellatio on the Ferris wheel at Coney Island, after which he confessed that she was the most exciting woman he'd ever met.

  Of course, the very thought of his pale, hairy body, which at one time could have been "a lean mean fighting machine" but had since gone to seed, made her ill. Preferring women for sex anyway, she considered her encounters with "Leo" among her finest acting jobs as she pretended to have multiple orgasms during his rather weak performances.

  Then came the night she'd been waiting for when, after letting him do one of the "unnatural acts," he told her that he loved her. It didn't mean he could leave his wife just yet, "but maybe someday, when the kids are grown, you and I can think about making a life together."

  Malovo began to cry. "It is a nice dream. But how can you speak of making a life together when there are so many secrets between us still?"

  "What do you mean, darling?"

  "Secrets ... like, I don't even really know what you do for a living.... You could be a ... an insurance salesman," she cried, the implication being that an insurance salesman would have never been allowed to do what they had just done.

  Sipowitz chuckled and ran his hand down her naked back. "I ain't no insurance salesman," he said, but it didn't stop her from burying her head in a pillow and sobbing.

  Sipowitz weighed what he should do. He'd been a good Marine—fought for his country—and had been highly recruited by the firm that put him in charge of day security. They paid him more than five times what he'd made in the Marines, plus benefits and perks worth another year's salary.

  However, his boss, and a square-jawed Cro-Magnon from SAIC, had emphasized when he was hired that he couldn't tell anyone except his wife where he worked. "It leaves you open to espionage," Mr. Cro-Magnon explained.

  Sipowitz had followed the rules like a good Marine. Not even his parents or siblings, or any of his buddies from the Corps who dropped in from time to time, knew anything more than that he had a high-level job with a security firm. They all assumed he did secret government work and left it at that.

  "You must promise to keep this a secret," he'd told the sobbing Natalie. "I'd lose my job if they knew I told you." The sobbing stopped. "You know the MetroTech buildings in Brooklyn?" Her beautiful blonde head nodded. "I work in one of those. In fact, I'm in charge of security at the most important one."

  Natalie had flipped over onto her back, exposing the magnificent breasts that seemed impervious to gravity even after her nearly forty years on the planet. "That is exciting," she exclaimed, letting her hand drift to the inside of his thigh. "Is very James Bond, no?"

  "Well, I guess in a manner of speaking. Now, is that better?"

  "Can I see this place?" Her hand stopped wandering.

  He thought about it and then nodded. "I can probably get you a tour, say you're a possible new hire," he said. "But there will be a quick security check, my guys will have to run your fingerprints and ... What is it, darling?"

  At the mention of the word "fingerprints," Natalie smiled sadly and shook her head. "That is okay, my love," she said, using the "L" word for the first time. "It is not possible."

  Sipowitz had pressed her to know what the problem was. "If it's the background check ... that's not much of anything," he said. "Just covers my butt if the bosses ask about you. I'd still probably get in trouble, but my guys will cover for me. They're mostly ex-Corps, too. That is, unless you're a terrorist or something." He'd laughed at the joke until she turned over on her stomach and started crying again.

  Finally, after much pleading, Natalie confessed that she was in the country illegally. After her marriage fell apart, her mean old husband had reported her to the Immigration and Naturalization Service to get her deported. If his men ran her fingerprints, they'd learn that there was a deportation order out for her arrest; they'd have her on the next plane back to Chechnya.

  "So you see, I am not to visit your place of work, my love," she sniffled. "And you should probably have nothing more to do with me. I am a bad person."

  "No, no you're not." Sipowitz hugged her. "The immigration laws are all screwy." He thought for a moment. "You know what, there's another way." At his clearance level, he was allowed to bring his wife on the premises so long as he was with her at all times.

  All it had taken was to steal his wife's driver's license and talk her into giving him a set of her fingerprints on a card. "They're doing background checks on all family members," he'd explained to his wife, who long ago had stopped caring about what he did for a living.

  Then it had been easy to slip Natalie's photograph into his wife's license, bring her to the building, and substitute his wife's fingerprint card for Natalie's. Of course, his crew knew that the good-looking "cougar," their term for a beautiful, "mature" woman, wasn't the boss's wife. But the guy was a bona-fide war hero who'd done his tours in the first Gulf War and Afghanistan; everyone knew his wife was a shrew. So if he was getting a little on the side, the
n Semper Fi, they weren't going to raise a ruckus.

  Sipowitz was glad he had thought of the old switcheroo. Once he got Natalie into the building, she couldn't keep her hands off of him. Suddenly she wanted to "do it" everywhere—from a stall in the executive washroom of Bears Steam to the desk of the chairman of JP Morgan early in the morning before he came to work. His crew cooperated by turning off the security cameras whenever the boss and his girl wanted to get busy in some new location.

  There were a few floors, he told her, where he couldn't get her in. "Mostly just a bunch of computers anyway," he explained. "But they're kind of sensitive, so they have their own private security guys who know about that high-tech stuff." He and his crew and the other guys worked together in the sense that they'd report anything suspicious to each other, but otherwise their activities were autonomous.

  Natalie's favorite place to visit during their trysts was the security firm's main office, which occupied the top floor of the thirty-story building, a location that allowed his firm to provide complete security for anyone landing on the helicopter pad. But what occupied most of his crew's time was what went on inside the building, from the top on down to the men stationed at the front desk. Natalie was fascinated by the security cameras they used to monitor the building and its environs, such as the bomb-proof underground garage. And sex in Sipowitz's office was particularly exciting.

  Early that morning, she'd met Sipowitz at the parking lot near "the Metro," which is what he called the complex. He drove as fast as he could to the parking garage, and as fast as the elevator could move, they were on the top floor. "Um, Mrs. Sipowitz has something important she needs to share with me privately," he had said to the four guys monitoring the security cameras.

  "Sure boss, no problem," one of the four said, as the others tried not to laugh. "We'll let you know if anything comes up. You do the same, eh?"

  Sipowitz pulled Natalie back to his office. He closed the door and locked it. "Go ahead, yell all you want," he laughed as he started to unzip his pants. "Nobody will be able to hear you."

  Ten minutes later, Malovo pulled her pants back on and looked down at the half-naked body of Leonard Sipowitz. A letter opener protruded from his left ear. She'd been on top and waited for the moment of his orgasm before shoving the blade into his brain, twisting the handle in several violent circles. She'd thought it was sexually exciting that he'd bucked so hard at first and then died in a series of convulsions. I'll have to try that again sometime, she thought as she looked at the clock radio. It was 7 a.m.... Plenty of time to do everything that needed to be done.

  Malovo opened her cell phone and dialed a number. "Where are you?" she asked. "Good. Are you prepared? Yes, Allah-u-Akbar. Now wait for my signal."

  She pulled the gun from the shoulder-holster of her former lover. Even with her "wife's" visitor card, she had still had to pass through a metal detector. The fact that he always wore a Colt .45 to work made getting a firearm into the building that much easier.

  She tucked the gun into the back of her waistband and walked into the monitoring room. The four young men watching the screens looked up, then went back to their duties. Sometimes the boss took a nap to recover from one of his little morning workouts.

  Malovo wasted no time. The control center was also soundproofed, so she wasn't worried about the roar of the .45 as she shot first one, then the next, and then a third young man. The fourth she kept alive.

  "Shhhhh, Billy." She pointed the gun at his head. "This is a robbery. Nothing worth losing your life about, am I not correct?"

  "Yes, ma'am," Billy replied. He was the youngest and, she'd guessed correctly, the easiest to manipulate.

  "Then do exactly as I say. First, clean the blood off those other monitors. I can't see a thing in them."

  When Billy finished, Malovo had him handcuff himself to his desk with a telephone next to him. "If someone calls," she said, "you will answer as you would normally. Any attempt to give a warning, and I will shoot you in the balls and let you bleed to death. Your idiot boss told me the code words, so don't try anything stupid. Now be a good boy, and you will do better than your friends."

  With Billy secured, Malovo flipped through the monitors to ascertain the whereabouts of the other security guards. The two at the front desk were chatting and drinking coffee; the other four on duty were making the early-morning rounds on various floors.

  Satisfied that none were in problem areas, she dialed the telephone number of the man who had called earlier. "Okay, Car One, proceed." She turned to watch the monitor for the entrance to the underground garage until she saw the van turn in, and then switched to the garage camera.

  The van pulled into a space and disgorged a half-dozen men armed with submachine guns and pistols. As they ran for the elevator, she checked the monitor and then spoke again into her telephone. "Fifth floor. He's in the hallway just to the right."

  Malovo watched as the team burst from the elevator and took the guard by surprise. They incapacitated him with a stun gun and dragged him into the elevator.

  "Second target, tenth floor."

  Malovo's team captured the other patrolling security men in short order. They then transported their hostages to the nineteenth floor where, using a switch on the console, she unlocked the door into the office area. The four security guards were taken to a back office, forced to strip out of their uniforms, and executed.

  Dressed in the dead men's uniforms, four members of the team took the elevator to the main floor, where they captured the two remaining guards. Two of Malovo's men remained at the front desk while the others took these guards back to the nineteenth floor to also be stripped and shot.

  Except for the two on the front desk, the remaining members of the team returned to the garage. Malovo called a second number. "Car Two, proceed." She watched as the second van pulled into the garage and parked next to the first.

  Another six men, including Azahari Mujahid and Abu Samar, got out of the van. Along with the first team, they now began loading dollies with C-4 explosives, which were transported along with wires and pager detonators to the nineteenth floor.

  Once all of the explosives were transported, Malovo flipped on the audio switch that would allow her to broadcast to the nineteenth-floor, which housed the offices for a securities trading firm. The employees would have an unexpected and unpleasant surprise when they arrived for work.

  "Congratulations, warriors of Islam," she said, winking at Billy. "You have completed Phase One. It is now 7:30, one-half hour before your next hostages will be arriving for work. You know what to do."

  She picked out Mujahid, who with Samar was standing off a little to the side of the others. "Sheik Mujahid."

  "Yes."

  "My men will take care of any arrivals," she said. "You may proceed with your mission. Allah-u-Akbar!"

  Malovo turned off the audio switch. "So Billy, where are you from?"

  33

  As the trial of Jessica Campbell resumed Tuesday morning, Dr. Louise "Niki" Nickles poked her head into the courtroom like an actor taking a peek at the audience before a performance, then stepped in. She adjusted a small pink beret on top of her Barbie-blonde hair, pushed the pink-tinted frames up on her nose, and marched to the witness stand.

  Sitting down, she waved to the defendant. "Hello, Jessica," she said cheerily, as if they were old friends meeting for tea. Jessica looked up briefly but didn't return the smile as she went back to her drawing.

  Lewis began by asking Nickles to brief the jury on her educational and professional background. The psychiatrist spent the next ten minutes reviewing her multiple degrees from an impressive slate of universities, the clinical trials she'd completed that had been funded through the National Institutes of Mental Health, her numerous awards, and a great many published works. At the conclusion of her speech, she smiled and nodded to the jurors as if expecting a round of applause. When none was forthcoming, she arched her eyebrows and frowned as she turned back to Lewis.


  "Before we begin your analysis, Dr. Nickles," the attorney said, "you have an ... unusual way of speaking, do you not?"

  "Um, hmmm ... yes. I have a speech impediment known as a ... hmmm, ah ... slackwater drawl, which causes me to sometimes ... break my sentences into fragments at odd spots. However, it in no way affects the way my brain ... mmm ... functions." She looked at the jurors. "You just need to pay attention ... hmmmm?"

  "I'm sure we will. Doctor, have you had an opportunity to examine the defendant, Jessica Campbell?"

  "Yes, on a number of occasions, for a total of about ... ummm, ha ... twenty hours."

  Twenty hours at $250 an hour, Karp thought. Plus whatever time it took to think about it, discuss it, write it up, and discuss it some more. At least the taxpayers aren't footing the bill this time. And we're not paying anybody to refute her.

  "And doctor, bearing in mind that another defense witness, Dr. Harry Winkler, has testified that when he saw Jessica Campbell four years ago, she was suffering from postpartum depression, are you able to confirm that diagnosis from your own examinations?"

  "Actually ... um, hmmm ... no."

  "No?" Lewis asked, looking over at the jurors as if surprised.

  "No. While it is certainly true that Mrs. Campbell has... ah, yes ... suffered from postpartum depression in the past, at the time of this, unfortunate occurrence, she was suffering from a much more severe illness called ... mmm hmmm ... postpartum psychosis."

  "Postpartum psychosis?" Lewis repeated the words slowly.

  "Yes, specifically, postpartum schizophrenia resulting in ... ahem, mmm ... delusions and a loss of touch with reality."

  "I see. Now, doctor, I think most of us, when we hear the word 'schizophrenia,' think of 'split-personality'—that is, two or more 'personalities' inhabiting the same body."

  Nickles rolled her eyes. "Ah yes, the television version of schizophrenia— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one good ... hmmm ... one monstrously bad." Actually, the more proper term for the "split personality" condition was "multiple personalities," she explained. "But it has very little to do with ... um ... schizophrenia. In extreme cases ... multiple personality disorder is where the individual seems to have ... mmm ... a different personality on different occasions. These personalities don't know about ... each other; instead the individual... ah ... acts as if they were two or more different people."