Swimming with Sharks (41 page)

After the bombing, a wave of compassion washed over the population—even those who didn’t support Nick Kostidis and his policies sincerely grieved for the mayor’s family. Countless people placed bouquets of flowers at the gate of Gracie Mansion and city hall. They lit candles and waited patiently in the sweltering summer heat to sign one of the condolence books. The bombing had been the feature story on TV and radio stations nationwide for the past ten days. Even the tiniest development was extensively covered. Wild speculation about the bombers’ motives circulated in the media, but little progress was made in getting to the truth. Outside city hall and Mount Sinai Hospital, concerned citizens and reporters waited patiently for news about the mayor’s health. All of the city’s churches and synagogues held services for the victims of the attack.

Frank Cohen had lived through the worst ten days of his life. Since that fateful Sunday morning, he had been peppered with questions from all directions about the incident at Gracie Mansion. Although he wasn’t an eyewitness, agents and officers of the FBI, the NYPD, and the Department of State asked him the same questions over and over. Did Nick Kostidis have enemies? Of course he did—what a stupid question! Any man in his position had enemies. With his blunt candor, Nick had inevitably stepped on some toes.

The worst thing about the endless questioning was that Frank actually knew who was behind this attack, but he couldn’t say a word until he had spoken to Nick. Filled with horror, he recalled the sight of Raymond Howard. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see the man’s badly burned face. The explosion had ripped off both of his hands. It would have been more merciful if he had died right away.

When the security officers rushed Nick into the house after the bomb went off, Frank rushed to Howard’s side. Just five minutes before, Ray Howard had been a good-looking man with a fit body, but now he was a horrific sight. His hair, his eyebrows—everything was burned. His skin looked as if it had shrunk. Ray looked like a mummy, but he was still
alive. Despite his disgust, Frank leaned over him as the paramedic carefully wrapped the burned body in aluminum foil. Ray had extended what was left of his arm toward him, and the eyes in this cruelly disfigured face looked up at him in desperation. He tried over and over to tell him something before Frank finally understood. Ray was telling him who was responsible for the attack, but that was no surprise. The really shattering insight was that Ray Howard—who had been Frank’s colleague for six years and worked by his side almost every day—was the mole Nick had been so desperate to uncover.

Frank Cohen took on the difficult task of calling the relatives. He called Mary’s sister Maureen, her parents, and the parents of Britney Edwards. He talked to the shocked and crying staff at Gracie Mansion, and then he drove to city hall to take on a responsibility that weighed heavily on his shoulders. All he wanted to do was hole up somewhere and cry. He worshiped Nick Kostidis like a father and it grieved Frank enormously that he couldn’t help him. But he couldn’t afford to collapse. He had to stay strong—unlike Allie Mitchell and many other members of the mayor’s staff. Everyone at city hall was paralyzed in the days after the attack, wondering how they could possibly go on with their work. Official events were canceled, and all flags in New York City flew at half-mast. Hundreds of condolence calls and letters flooded into the mayor’s office each day. It was a small consolation that there were kind-hearted people in this cold, monstrous city. Although he usually shunned public appearances, Frank rose to the challenge. He spoke to the press, helped the deputy mayor put a crisis team together, and kept a level head. He helped clean up the debris from the explosion after the police had concluded their investigation. Not a trace remained of Sunday’s tragedy, which had wiped out four lives and possibly destroyed another one forever.

Vincent Levy and Sergio Vitali sat across from each other at La Côte Basque, a renowned French restaurant on West Fifty-Fifth Street. Levy felt the need to tell Sergio what went wrong with Syncotron after Alex clued him in. He would have preferred not to tell him, but new safety measures were in order that required discussion.

“Unfortunately, Zack acted the fool,” Levy concluded his remarks.

“This man is a weak link,” Sergio replied.

“Yes. Unfortunately. Especially when it comes to Alex Sontheim,” Levy confirmed. “Sometimes it almost seems like he’s jealous of her success.”

Sergio furrowed his brow in thought. Alex had been outraged when she called him, and he had to force himself to listen calmly and not scream at her. She was at Gracie Mansion as the mayor’s guest on Saturday night! Was she double-dealing? Why else hadn’t she told him about this invitation? What did she talk about with Kostidis? Did she know he was behind this bombing? He couldn’t afford to underestimate Alex under any circumstances. She was too clever. He couldn’t afford any mistakes, but at the moment, it seemed like she was provoking him to do exactly that. Because of St. John’s stupidity, she could be growing suspicious.

“We need something that we can use against her,” Levy contemplated, “but what?”

Sergio cleared his throat. He had been thinking about that for days. He knew that Levy was right.

“We’ll open an account in her name and deposit money from deals that she closes for LMI. We’ll book a flight in her name to the Bahamas, send a woman who looks like her, and once the account is open we’ll have leverage against her.”

“Hmm.” Levy pondered. “That sounds pretty good.”

Sergio reached into his inner jacket pocket.

“Here’s her passport,” he said. “I have too many things to deal with right now. Take care of St. John and see to it that things calm down. I don’t need any unnecessary problems right now.”

“But…I…” Levy hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Umm…I know that you and Alex…well…umm…”

“I bang her every now and then.” Sergio kept a straight face. “So what? That doesn’t mean that I’m taking any business risk because of it. Do what you have to do. You have my blessing.”

The hospital room was large and bright. It had a magnificent view across Central Park through the galvanized-steel wire mesh of the security windows, but Nick saw neither the green leaves nor the silvery shimmering lake. He sat slumped on a chair and stared aimlessly at the wall. His hands, with which he usually gestured so vividly, were bound and lay limply in his lap. The burn wounds on his face looked blood-red in comparison to the deathly pallor of his skin.

Frank Cohen fought back tears when he saw his boss. Whoever had killed Nick’s family with the intention of getting to him had achieved his goal. The Nick Kostidis Frank knew had died the second they turned to ash. Frank wanted to say something to console him, something compassionate and understanding—something that Nick might have said in such a situation—but he couldn’t think of anything.

“Hello,” Frank said timidly. Nick turned around slowly. Frank was shocked to see the dull, lifeless look in his bloodshot eyes. The burns and flesh wounds on his body would heal, but no one could possibly imagine the psychological scars.

“Frank.” Nick’s voice sounded coarse and strange. The drugs had put him into a numb, deadened state. “Christopher’s car wouldn’t start,” he suddenly said. “I suggested that they take my car. They didn’t want to leave too late because of the heat.”

Frank bit at his lip trying not to cry.

“I insisted. I couldn’t possibly have known…” Nick stopped and took an agonized breath. “They’re dead now. And it’s my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” Frank objected quietly.

“Yes, it is. I didn’t take those letters seriously. I didn’t listen to Mary. It’s my fault that they had to die.”

Nick’s face was expressionless. He seemed neither desperate nor close to a nervous breakdown. He was completely devoid of emotion, which was terrifying.

“Ray was the mole I was looking for. He knew about the bomb in the car. He would have let me die, but he wanted to prevent my family from dying.”

Frank swallowed and fought his tears.

“Why? Why did he do that? I knew him for such a long time, and I trusted him.”

Frank didn’t know how to respond. He’d asked himself this very same question over and over again.

After he was alone again, Nick stood up and walked to the window with heavy steps. He pressed his forehead against the cold glass and closed his eyes. If he had more strength, he would have tried to jump out the window. The strong sedatives prescribed by the doctors had put him in a semiconscious, trancelike state.

But the kind moment of numbness granted by the drugs seemed to be coming to a close. He was forced to face the brutal reality that slowly and frighteningly approached him like an all-encompassing black tidal wave. Mary was dead. Christopher was dead. His entire family had been extinguished in a few seconds, vanished forever. He didn’t even have the chance to say good-bye to their lifeless bodies because there was nothing left of the two people who meant the most to him in this world. As if in an
endless, slow-motion loop, Nick saw Mary’s smile, her wave, and the look of panic in Raymond Howard’s eyes. And then he saw the bright spark of the flame and felt the incredible force of the explosion that ripped the heavy armored car into two pieces like a toy.

Desperately, Nick pressed his burned hands over his ears and closed his eyes, but he couldn’t dispel the noises and images in his head. And yet there was no sorrow in his heart, nor pain and anger—only emptiness and numbness. He could hear their voices when people talked to him. He saw their worry and compassion and knew that they wanted to help him, but what could they do? A torrential black river rushed between them, and this river was his guilt. There was no consolation, no salvation for him, because he was guilty of Mary’s and Christopher’s deaths. He’d gone too far with his obsession, and now he had to atone for it. He would have to live with this guilt for the rest of his life. Fate had spared him, but at what cost? Nick convulsed from the pain. His heart was as heavy as a rock, and he feared the day when he had to leave the protective walls of the hospital and look life in the eye again.