When the council hesitated several years earlier to go forward with Kane’s plan to kill the Pope while destroying St. Patrick’s Cathedral, all of which would be blamed of course on Islamic terrorists, he’d gone ahead on his own. Now Kane apparently had been killed by David Grale, his plan foiled and his body carried away by the Hudson River.
Newbury had disliked Kane and didn’t mourn his death. But the bigger concern had been that Kane’s unilateral action had drawn attention to the Sons of Man before they were ready. It could have been a disaster, and the council had to act swiftly and decisively to put out the fires created by Kane that could have led authorities to SOM.
However, Newbury had at least respected Kane for his ruthlessness and cruel brilliance. He’d always thought of Crawford as a lightweight like his father. But then last spring, the younger man had suddenly emerged as a major player with a plan that, Newbury had to admit, might just work where his had failed.
Newbury was torn by that possibility. On one hand, the ascension of the Sons of Man to a position of global dominance depended on a strategy of creating social, political, and economic turmoil in the United States such that the population would forgo their precious freedoms in exchange for a protective, all-powerful fascist state. As a true believer, Newbury thought the Sons of Man were performing a “greater good” by saving the United States from being overrun by immigrants, its social values undermined by faggots, socialists, and liberals, and its rightful place in the world usurped by Third World and third-rate countries. He lamented that the United States was becoming a nation of “mud people”—the color of mud with a mud culture.
No longer a decent nation for the white race, Newbury thought. However much he hated to admit it, Crawford’s plan might change that. If all went well, a devastating terrorist attack would be blamed on the Iranians—in part by “proof” that would be brought before the House Committee on Homeland Security, which Crawford chaired. The United States would retaliate, possibly with nuclear weapons, the entire Middle East would be engulfed in the flames of war, and chaos would rule at home, to which SOM’s carefully placed men would bring order and security in exchange for ultimate power. Their associates in other parts of the world—Russia and Europe, in particular—would also seize power during this tumultuous time so that a new world order could be established with the Sons of Man on top, their allies underneath, and a watchful eye kept on China until the “Asia Question” could be addressed.
On the other hand, the congressman’s success meant that the power on the council would most likely pass to a new generation who didn’t respect those who’d patiently planned for so many years. “So your courier delivered the message that your people are prepared to go forward with the plan,” Newbury said.
Crawford smiled and shrugged his round shoulders. “There will be a small delay in the date because of the incident in Dagestan—and by the way, we still have no good information on how our enemies nearly succeeded in killing our friend Ajmaani. Now that would have thrown a real wrench in the plan.”
Newbury scowled. “Then I suggest you tighten security, or perhaps I can recommend someone with experience who may know something about it.”
The younger man’s eyes blazed for a moment at the insult, but he quickly smiled again. “It’s not a problem. I was just noting that there will be a delay in Operation Flashfire, one of several days—unfortunately—and that might limit the collateral damage. Still, the numbers should be significant, in the thousands.”
“I still don’t like that part of your plan,” Newbury said. “Too much carnage.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve developed a conscience in your old age?” Crawford smirked. “The Dean Newbury of even a decade ago wouldn’t have minded throwing away a few thousand lives if it was for the greater good.”
Look how the jackal gloats now that he thinks the lion has grown old, Newbury thought, but he better keep a distance between us. I still have claws and teeth.
“Conscience has nothing to do with it,” he growled. “I think it’s a tactical mistake. We want the American people afraid more than we want them angry. Think about how they responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. Ask the Japanese, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda about the wisdom of angering the American public. Too many deaths and that’s how they’ll respond. However, striking at their daily lives, making them worried about leaving their homes, or how they’ll survive if ‘Islamic fanatics’ threaten to take over the world, and they’ll be happy to let us take care of the problem for them. My plan would have accomplished that.”
“But your plan failed,” Crawford sniffed. “And many on the council, as well as the families, are not very happy with you. Your failure lost a lot of money. Billions.”
“A drop in the bucket compared to our net worth,” Newbury snarled.
“Perhaps, but they don’t want any more such drops,” Crawford retorted. “Maybe they think that you and your generation on the council are past your prime. We’ll see how they respond when my plan succeeds and we are in control. Myr shegin dy ve, bee eh, right? What must be, will be.”
Newbury’s blood boiled but he held his temper. Now was not the time to tear the heart out of this jackal. “You have al-Sistani, then? The last we heard from you and your cohorts was that the plan could not go forward without him.”
Crawford smiled. “Not quite yet. But we are making arrangements that should take care of that problem. A bit late, perhaps, but better than never.”
“Might I ask what these arrangements are?” Newbury asked.
“I can do better than that,” Crawford replied. He pressed a button on the desk and a television blinked on in the corner. “This is a live feed from a secret location. Have a look.”
Scowling, Newbury turned and saw a young woman tied to a chair with a hood over her head. Crawford picked up a microphone from the desk and spoke into it. “Abu, we’d like to see our guest, please.”
A dark-haired, dark-complected man appeared briefly on the monitor and pulled the hood off the woman. She blinked once, then her face grew angry. “Let me go, assholes, or you’ll regret it.”
Shocked, Newbury looked at Crawford. “You kidnapped Lucy Karp? Do you know what kind of manhunt this will cause?”
“No one even knows she’s gone,” Crawford replied. “We have spies around the Karp family, as well as among this piece-of-shit Grale’s little band, and knew that she planned to travel back to her home in New Mexico, where apparently—can you imagine in this age of technology—there’s no cell service. Last night her parents received a text message from her cell phone saying she landed safely, and then she’ll be out of range. That will buy us days, even a week or two, without raising alarm, and then it will be too late. In fact, when her parents do learn she is missing, they’ll be too distracted with her safety to interfere again with our plans. And then we have a little surprise for Karp…icing on the cake, if you will.”
“So what has she got to do with al-Sistani?” Newbury asked.
“Apparently, our nemesis Grale has quite the thing for our little flower. We believe that he will hand the Sheik over to secure her for himself, or at least save her from us.”
“A prisoner exchange?”
“Well, that’s probably how Grale will view it,” Crawford said. “But we like to think of Miss Lucy more as bait we’re going to use to rid ourselves of this lunatic once and for all.”
“Grale is a dangerous man to set traps for,” Newbury warned. “He’s a religious fanatic, and we all know how dangerous they can be. We certainly use enough of them ourselves.”
“Let us worry about Grale,” Crawford said. “But speaking of dangerous men, how’s your nephew? Wouldn’t it just be easier to kill him and not have to worry if he’s truly a changed man?”
“To paraphrase you, I’ll handle my family’s business,” Newbury spat. “If I think anyone is too dangerous, I know what to do—this old lion has been killing jackals for
years.”
For a moment, Crawford’s eyes looked unsure, but then he let the threat slide. The boss will deal with the “old lion” soon enough, he thought. “Well, I’d invite you to stay for a late supper, but I’m sure you have better things to do, including your part in helping our plan succeed.”
Newbury looked hard at the younger man, wondering again where he’d suddenly found a backbone. “Indeed,” he replied. “We’ll be ready, just make sure the council is kept apprised—through me—of your progress.”
A few minutes after the old man left, Crawford stood at the big picture window looking through the telescope when he heard the other man enter. He knew who it was without looking by the thump of the cane on the floor. “So how’d I do?” he asked without turning.
“Well enough,” came Erik’s lisping reply. “What do you want? A medal for performing a simple task?”
Crawford knew better than to react angrily to the slight as he turned to look at the man with the silver mask for a face. “I don’t think it was a good idea to kidnap Lucy Karp. What if her parents learn before we’re ready? Karp could get the entire NYPD looking for her.”
The masked man’s eyes glittered. “I’ve thought of that. Indeed, I may use that to my advantage.”
Crawford nodded and turned back to the skyline across the water. “Magnificent view,” he said.
“Enjoy it now, because it’s about to change,” Erik sneered. “And Crawford?”
“Yes, sir?”
“The next time I want your opinion, I’ll cut it out of you.”
Across the river from where Crawford blanched at Erik’s threat, Karp left the Criminal Courts Building and found Dirty Warren waiting for him. The little news vendor was hopping from foot to foot, his face twitching. “Holy shit, Karp…piss on your motherfucker…you work long hours.”
“Hello, Warren,” Karp replied. “You’re out a bit late yourself.”
“I wanted to…crap crap whoop shit…whoop…give you a message,” Dirty Warren stammered as he wiped at a drip of snot on the end of his nose.
“Well, okay, what is it?” Karp asked, wondering what could have agitated his odd friend so much.
“Andre Previn was just seventeen years old and had just joined MGM’s music department when he played the piano music for this 1947 film,” Dirty Warren said.
Karp’s jaw dropped. “You stood out here freezing to ask me movie trivia?” He rolled his eyes as if to suggest Dirty Warren was crazy, which he was.
“Just answer the…motherfucker…question, asswipe.”
Karp looked sideways at Dirty Warren. Was that the Tourette’s or…? “It’s not even a tough one,” he said. “The answer is It Happened in Brooklyn starring Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, and Jimmy Durante, among others. If you’re going to freeze to death just to try to catch me tired at the end of a long day, you’re going to have to come up with something better than that.”
Dirty Warren shrugged. “It wasn’t my question…ooooh boy ooooh boy.”
Karp smirked. “What’s the matter? Got to bring in reinforcements?” He expected the little man to smile at the insult and retort, but instead Dirty Warren looked worried and mad.
“It was that guy who’s been hanging around…suck tits…sometimes lately,” Dirty Warren said. “He wears a big hoodie sweatshirt so nobody ever sees much of his face. I think he’s crippled and deformed or something. Anyway, he must have heard us playing movie trivia the other day…lick me Martha whoop whoop…and this afternoon said to ask you that one.”
The pickpocket, Karp thought as he looked around, hoping to see the man. I’d love to ask him a little trivia myself. “You could have asked me tomorrow,” he said. “Why’d you wait?”
Dirty Warren looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I don’t like the guy…bastards bitches bitches…he gives me the creeps,” the news vendor said, staring intensely at Karp through his Coke-bottle glasses. “But I figured he was just another…ooooh boy boy oooooh boy shit cunt…insane street person. But then he said that he knew Lucy and my antennae went up. How’d he…shit piss oh boy oh boy…know her name? He made sure that I understood he was trying to pass on a warning in his riddle. He kept saying ‘It’s the worst that could happen.’ That’s just how he said it, ‘the worst that could…oh fuck me naked scrotum…happen.’ So I figured you better know sooner than…cocksucker sphincter…later.”
At that moment, a blast of frigid air came whistling up from the concrete and steel canyons of the Financial District. Dirty Warren cried out at winter’s early bite, pulled his thin coat around his skinny body, and started to scurry off but then stopped short. “Oh, and he said to tell you to think about the…motherfucking…view.”
“The view?” Karp asked.
Dirty Warren shrugged. “Yeah, but don’t ask me. My brain is frozen solid. Just think about the view, that’s all he said. With that, he turned and disappeared down Franklin Street and into the darkening evening.
Karp shivered, but more from what he’d just heard than from the night air. He started to walk home while punching in a number he had for Jaxon. There was no answer, so he left a message. “We need to talk. And by the way, if Lucy contacts you, tell her to phone home.”
17
THE TWO AMERICAN TOURISTS SIPPED THEIR BEERS AND chatted at the open-air bar, seemingly oblivious to the crowds wandering the busy plaza on the other side of the street. Some who noticed them that evening, including several prostitutes, thought they might be gay. Otherwise, what were two tan, good-looking men—one middle-aged and the other in his early twenties—doing alone together when there were so many beautiful women available in Port of Spain, the capital city of Trinidad?
A more careful, or suspicious, observer, however, might have noted that one or the other was constantly keeping watch on a business advertised as Trinidad & Tobago Dairy Products, Inc., across the street on the other side of the plaza. It would have taken an even more alert pair of eyes to have registered the Asian businessman sitting on a park bench eating a hand-carved papaya, and the Indian-looking T-shirt vendor, as well as several local black men who also kept track of who entered and left the business.
Jaxon noted with satisfaction the placement of “Asian businessman” Tran Vinh Do, and John Jojola, the former chief of police for the Taos Indian Pueblo, as well as the members of the Trinidad national antiterrorism agency. But suddenly he ducked to hide his face behind Ned Blanchett, who had his back to the woman walking toward them who Jaxon had recognized.
“Shit,” Jaxon exclaimed under his breath.
“What?” Blanchett replied, tensing for a fight.
“It’s that reporter, Ariadne Stupenagel. She’s coming this way.”
Blanchett cringed. He knew the reporter would recognize him, too; she was one of his future mother-in-law’s best friends, whom he’d met on several occasions. “Did she see you?”
“I don’t know,” Jaxon replied. “I turned and she was looking right at me.” He chanced a peek around his partner and slumped. “She’s making a beeline for us.”
“What do we do?”
“Hope she knows how to take a hint,” Jaxon growled. The agent stepped out in full view of the approaching journalist and looked straight at her. However, he continued talking to Blanchett and gave no sign that he recognized her.
Ariadne slowed her stride, then caught the hint and continued toward the two men. She sat on a stool next to Ned, but other than a flirtatious smile, she said nothing to indicate that she knew them. The bartender showed up quickly to take the drink order—a strong local rum called babash and pineapple—for the statuesque blond in the strapless sundress. He gave a slight nod toward the two men next to her and shook his head before leaving to fetch her drink.
“My, my, you never know who you might run into in the islands,” she murmured while turning her head to watch the bartender walk away.
“Hello, Ariadne,” Jaxon replied, though he kept his eyes on Ned. “Small world.”
> The conversation ended when the bartender returned with Ariadne’s drink. He looked again from her to the two men and back again before shrugging and going on about his business.
“The bartender thinks you’re gay and that I’m wasting my time,” Ariadne said, taking a sip.
“What?” Blanchett scowled and threw a hard look toward the bartender.
“Don’t worry about it, honey.” Ariadne laughed. “It’s a good cover. Usually spies and undercover agents are too macho to use it unless, of course, they really are gay. But you should go with it…everybody in Trinidad figures every white guy is either with the DEA, the FBI, Homeland Security, the NSA…or the Russians, or the Chinese, or the Venezuelans…”
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Jaxon said, turning toward her as if just starting a bar conversation. “We’re just here on vacation.”
“So you really are gay?”
“Hell, no,” Blanchett sputtered indignantly before Jaxon patted him on the arm.
“Don’t let her get your goat, cowboy.” Jaxon chuckled. “Yep, just a couple of bachelors enjoying some beach time and cold beers.”
“Yeah, and I’m here for the deep-sea fishing,” Stupenagel replied. “My guess is that you’re in lovely Port of Spain for the same reason everybody else is nervous about this place: Trinidad is the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas to the United States and a hotbed of radical Islamic activism. So, it’s about the LNG, isn’t it?”
“And what brings you to Trinidad?” Jaxon asked, ignoring her parry and chuckling as if she’d just told him a joke.
Ariadne smiled as she shrugged. “Same thing, except I’m going to write about how every spook down here and their government figures that sooner or later, crazy Islamic terrorists are going to hijack one of these LNG tankers, float it near a big population center, rupture the holding tank, and then ignite it. My sources tell me that the resulting fireball will melt steel and incinerate concrete—not to mention human beings—up to a mile away, and still have enough heat to leave second-degree burns on exposed skin two miles away. About as close to a nuclear explosion as a terrorist can dream, but without all that fuss with fission and smuggling weapons-grade plutonium in suitcases.”
Capture (Butch Karp Thrillers) Page 18