Collision (7 page)

They walked ahead of him as they strode toward a black limousine that slipped out of the traffic and pulled up parallel to them; three cars behind was a dark blue Chevrolet. The man who had been pointed out by the Chechen walked rapidly toward the Chevrolet.

At that moment, another man dashed across Fifth Avenue, cut in front of the limousine, stepped before the advancing trio, and stopped. The bodyguards had seen him and chased him before. He was a paparazzo—but he did not have a camera. For a moment, they were puzzled. Then one of them noticed something attached to the right lens of his sunglasses—and realized, Google Glass!

As one of the bodyguards ran forward, the paparazzo rapidly blinked. The bodyguard towered over the paparazzo, snatched his Google Glass off with one hand, and punched him with the other. As the smaller man fell, the bodyguard hurled the Google Glass to the ground and stomped on the tiny computer built into the frame of the sunglasses.

While the paparazzo writhed on the sidewalk, Basayev and his guardians entered the limousine, which pulled into the Fifth Avenue traffic and began crawling south.

Each time the paparazzo had blinked, the Google Glass had recorded the image and transmitted it to his cell phone in a pocket in his suit. The cell phone transmitted the images to a computer in his office in SoHo. Three days later, two of the images appeared in the
New York Post
, accompanying a story about the Russian oligarchs' “invasion of superposh Manhattan real estate.”

One photo showed Basayev, a handsome middle-aged man, tanned and fit, with a beard that was little more than a five-o'clock shadow. His close-cropped hair was graying and receding. He wore Top-Siders, a half-buttoned white shirt, and dark blue slacks. Basayev was frowning, his right arm raised as if warding off a blow. The
Post
caption noted that he had just “emerged from a new Fifth Avenue skyscraper, whose lavish penthouse he had bought for a reputed $120 million.”

The other photo showed one of the bodyguards charging toward the camera, his jacket flaring open and revealing a shoulder holster.

“Note that the bodyguard is carrying heat,” said the
Post
caption. “A New York Police Department spokesman revealed that the Glock in that holster is legal. The bodyguards have concealed-weapon licenses as employees of On Guard, the personal-security company owned by Basayev.”

The story described Basayev as one of Russia's richest oligarchs, ignoring his Chechen identity. That identity was especially important to American law-enforcement officials, who saw Basayev not only as an up-and-coming Russian mafia boss but also as a potential importer of Chechen terrorism. The man who jumped into the Chevrolet was an FBI agent assigned to the New York Police Department's Joint Terrorism Task Force.

*   *   *

Kuri Basayev was a
distant relative of Shamil Basayev, a notorious Chechen terrorist. But Kuri Basayev became one of the few successful Chechens who was accepted by the thin layer of the Russian ruling class that included financiers and killers. He was a man of two worlds with vague borders: finance and crime. On his legitimate side he had earned a reputation for shrewd investing that produced enormous fortune with a global reach. He had also played a veiled role in Vladimir Putin's rise to power in 2000—a connection that led to Basayev's control of oil companies, ore mines, and media corporations.

His criminal career was more difficult to track. But the expansion of his underworld empire became known to New York police when they discovered signs that he had his own representation in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, headquarters of the American branch of the Russian mob. Residents with or without police records appreciated the way the swaggering Russians kept the streets safe from muggers and FBI informers.

The latest newcomers were two young hit men who had arrived from a Chechen community in Idaho. Viktor showed them around what residents called “Russia by the Sea” and was impressed by the way the two cousins managed to fit into a place that did not welcome strangers, especially Chechen strangers.

Through an arrangement that Basayev had made, his men lived and worked separately from the established mob. So far Viktor had been behind the wheel for five of the cousins' hits—quick jobs in New York and New Jersey: shots to the back of the head for reasons unknown. Now Viktor wondered what would be the reward for this special operation.

 

13

Falcone was about to
leave his office when his unlisted private phone rang.
DC
POLICE
appeared on the caller ID screen and he picked up the phone.
Private, my ass. Nothing's private anymore.

“Mr. Falcone. This is Sergeant Clarence Reed. Please open your e-mail. I urgently want to send you some surveillance-camera images.”

Falcone sighed.
I wonder what the NSA will do about these e-mails.
Less than a minute later, on the monitor of his desktop computer he saw a dozen or so men and women walking rapidly or running. In the background he could see the entrance to the Sullivan & Ford Building. The image froze and the phone rang.

“Sergeant Reed again,” the voice on the phone said. “You are looking at an image from a Starbucks exterior surveillance camera on First Street, about one hundred yards south of the Sullivan and Ford Building, just after the shooting. You can see, near the entrance, the first officers leaving their vehicle.”

“Right. I see them,” Falcone said, leaning closer to the computer screen. “Hold it.… No … I don't think that's him.… I can't be sure.”

Falcone was wary of making any snap judgments, given the power of the new social media. He remembered how a false identification was made in the wake of the bombing in Boston two years ago. The young man, who was mistakenly identified, had his photo plastered all over the media. He got so much harassment that he ended up committing suicide.

“I understand,” Reed said. “Thanks anyway. We'll be doing a facial-recognition scan on this guy anyway and put him into match-up mode against our watch lists—FBI, CIA, Homeland Security. Please stand by for another image.”

Falcone stared at the computer monitor, looking at the image, now no longer stopped in time. The man on the screen—he had to be in his early twenties—walked on, not hurrying, not drawing attention.
Maybe he was the killer. Maybe he was already planning his next victim.
“Possibly him. Still not sure. It's just hard to say.”

Reed, still on the phone, said, “Now here comes an enlarged image from the windshield video of a patrol car turning onto Second Street near D and heading north in response to the 911 call.”

“Right,” Falcone said. “The police car passes a black car heading south. Can you read the license plate?”

“Unfortunately, no. Very muddy back plate.”

“On a Mercedes town car?” Falcone asked. “Very unlikely.”

“Yeah. Not the first time I've seen mud on the plates of a getaway car. So we have a black car—Mercedes. We blew up the image. No indication of a passenger. Driver has on what seemed to be a chauffeur cap. Maybe New York plates. But we can't be sure. So that's what we've got. The gunman was probably on foot, waiting a pickup. And God only knows where he is now. Well, Mr. Falcone, thank you for your help. We'll keep in touch.”

 

14

When Viktor saw the
road crew and the big orange
DETOUR
sign, he stopped and sighed. He was forced to turn left and go south, when he wanted to turn right and head north. Another turn around another block, another plea from Ahmed—
Viktor. I'm on E Street, near Eleventh Street. Where the fuck are you? Cops all over.
The GPS on Viktor's dashboard showed he was not too far away from Interstate 395.
Get to Ahmed, pick him up, head north … to New York Avenue, then out of this goddamn city.
Basayev's tech guy, who had wired the police scanner so that it worked inside the regular radio, had also added to the GPS an app that showed most surveillance-camera locations.
Jesus! Cameras all over the fucking place.

At Eleventh and D, Viktor spotted Ahmed leaning against a telephone poll, his head swiveling back and forth, back and forth.
If a smart cop saw that nervous son of a bitch, he'd take out his gun, walk right up to him, and start asking questions.

“Get in! Get in!” Viktor commanded. “In the back. Like a big shot.”

Ahmed opened the rear door and hurled himself into the backseat. “Let's go! Let's go!” he shouted.

“We need to get that fuckin' laptop,” Viktor said. “Show me—”

“We need to get the fuck out of here,” Ahmed shouted. “Out! Out! Let's go, for Christ sake.”

Viktor had parked at a bus stop on E Street, engine purring. Cops usually ignored town cars that stopped to await clients.

“Where the hell you put it?”

“I put the bag and my coat behind a Dumpster in an alley on Second Street, near E Street.”

“And the gun?”

“Yes. And the gun.”

Viktor looked at the GPS and ordered a new destination. “That alley is five, six minutes from here, if no big fuckin' orange signs.” Viktor studied the GPS map and saw a parking garage two blocks away, off Pennsylvania Avenue. He steered into traffic, drove to the garage, plucked his ticket from the machine, drove down the ramp to a space, and backed into the space. “My father tell me, front out, always front out. Back in so you can move fast after.”

Viktor looked at his Rolex, which once had been on the wrist of a hedge fund manager who had tried to cheat Kuri Basayev. “We sit here an hour, maybe two,” he said. “Things cool. Then we go to that alley and we get the goddamn laptop.” He patted the GPS map. “And we head north. On the turnpike we get hamburgers.”

 

15

Falcone walked down the
corridor toward the restroom, looked around, and then took a few steps toward the stairway. He had had enough police for the day, and he didn't intend to run into any of them on the elevator. At the fifth-floor landing he decided to give his weary legs a rest. He opened the door a crack, saw no one near the elevator doors, and headed toward them. An empty car arrived. He hit P1 for the basement parking garage.

The Sullivan & Ford Building, as an architectural critic wrote, looked “glassy and classy” on the outside. The basement garage was just as clean and classy. And nearly deserted, Falcone was glad to note.

He walked up the street-level ramp, which ended next to the building's E Street entrance, around the corner from the entrance with the stanchions, the yellow tape, and the knot of police at the doors. Satisfied that he had eluded the police and the TV and print reporters, Falcone turned right and took his usual route to his apartment on Pennsylvania Avenue.

As he congratulated himself on his successful escape, the word persisted in his mind. Falcone suddenly realized that he might be stepping into the gunman's escape route.
For some reason, he misses the pickup car. He comes out of the building, maybe walking a little slower than the people who are fleeing. He sees that the car isn't there. He goes to plan B, maybe talking to the driver to work out some place for a pickup.

*   *   *

Back in his days
as a prosecutor, Falcone had a reputation for nailing criminals by making hunches come true. He tried to explain that his hunches arose from his attempts to get inside a felon's brain—“soul-burrowing,” a
Boston Globe
feature writer called it. Falcone knew, deep in his soul, why he had become a relentless prosecutor who would never bargain, never make a deal: He kept making up for the fact that he had lost his first two cases—aggravated rape and vehicular manslaughter. He had vowed that never again would he allow law to thwart justice.

In the rape case, a judge ruled that the young woman had gone to the frat-house party voluntarily and had consumed liquor voluntarily and, according to witnesses, had entered the accused man's bedroom voluntarily. “This can hardly be a case of rape, let alone aggravated rape,” the judge had ruled in dismissing the case. “Aggravated rape calls for the victim to ‘resist to the utmost' and for the alleged rapist to ‘make threats of great and immediate bodily harm.' The accused said he had made no threat, and his alleged victim does not have a clear memory of what had happened. The prosecution's exhibit of torn clothing is irrelevant, given the lack of witnesses to what happened behind the closed bedroom door.”

The vehicular homicide case had not even reached a judge. Just before the scheduled day of the trial, someone in the governor's office had ordered that the case be handled by another prosecutor. The new prosecutor dropped the charge, because “the tragic accident had not involved a crime, namely no gross negligence, no drunk driving, no reckless driving, no speeding.” Not included in the explanation was the fact that the driver was a nephew of the lieutenant governor.

After those cases, he had a kind of epiphany: He would stop thinking like a lawyer, stop thinking like a prosecutor, and start thinking like a criminal—a smart criminal who not only broke the law but also tried to outwit the law.

*   *   *

Now, as he passed
Starbucks and a police car sped by on First Street, he found himself instinctively imagining himself as the gunman who tried to kill him.
No car. I have to walk and hope to find the car. I'm a pro, but I'm feeling a little panicky. I am alone, and that was not in the plan. Cops all around. That guy I shot at, he'll give the cops a description: young, black hair, usual stuff. And the coat, the bag. Hide them.

Falcone turned right on E Street to Second Street. He was on the stretch of the street specially named Mitch Snyder Place after the homeless advocate who turned the block-long former federal building here into a massive shelter.
Hide. A place to hide them. Look for cameras.
Falcone looked around and then remembered.
No cameras. Perfect.