The Ninth Step (11 page)

The man grinned. “
You got ’em on your own two feet.
” He held out his hand.

Jack laughed, pulled out his wallet, and handed over the money, with absolutely no hard feelings. He had to give credit where credit was due.

Inside the skyscraper, the detectives took an elevator up to the State Office of Homeland Security, which looked like an impressive, well-funded government headquarters, with its official seals and photo of the president in the lobby.

An elderly blonde sitting behind a reception desk offered up a starchy smile. “May I help you?”

Jack flashed his tin. “I’m Detective Leightner and this is Detective Powker. We’re here to see Brent Charlson.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

Jack crossed his arms. “Nope. But it’s urgent.”

The receptionist picked up her phone. “I’ll try his office.” She dialed. “Hi, Deb. I’ve got a couple of NYPD detectives here asking for Mr. Charlson.” She listened. “Leightner. And Powker. From—”

She looked inquisitively at Jack.

“Brooklyn South Homicide.”

She repeated that, listened for a few seconds more, then hung up.

“I’m sorry—Mr. Charlson is not in the building right now.”

“I don’t think so,” Jack replied.

Her smile curdled. “Excuse me?”

Jack leaned over the desk. “I just called his office about thirty seconds ago. And he answered the phone.” He had hung up as soon as he heard the man’s voice.

The woman rose from her seat. “Could you wait here a moment?” She disappeared through a side door.

Jack turned and grinned at his partner. “As my son used to say, we seem to be about as welcome as a screen door in a submarine.”

After a minute, the door opened and the receptionist returned. “You’ll need to go up to seventeen.”

Up they went. This floor looked anonymous, no seals anywhere, not even signs on the doors, except for the suite numbers. Jack raised his eyebrows and gave his partner a grin. “Either we’re on the super-duper top-secret floor, or this guy is just some flunky.”

BRENT CHARLSON DIDN’T LOOK
at all put out by the sudden visit.

“Sorry about that,” he said briskly, offering them a seat in his office, with its rich wood paneling and plush blue carpet “Our gorgon downstairs might be a little
too
efficient.”

Jack didn’t believe the receptionist had anything to do with it, but he held his tongue. Instead of sitting, he walked across the surprisingly large corner office to take in the views of midtown skyscrapers and the shining East River. By the looks of things, Charlson was hardly a flunky.

“What can I do for you?” the man said pleasantly. Jack would have expected him to ask if they’d had any success in tracking down the deli perp, but Charlson just waited. Jack didn’t take a seat; he preferred the psychological advantage of standing, as he would in a more routine station house interview. He stared down at the fed, who sat back in a swanky executive chair with his hands steepled together and a mildly curious expression on his face.
Grandfatherly,
Jack thought again.

“My partner and I have a bit of a problem here,” he said. “The thing is, we’ve got a murderer walking around our city right now. And it really troubles me that we’re out there pounding the sidewalks, looking for this guy, with what seems to be incomplete information.”

Charlson considered this statement thoughtfully. “I want to assure you gentlemen that I’m not out to disrespect you in any way or to maintain any secrecy that’s not absolutely necessary.” He didn’t continue.

“Okay. I’m glad to hear that. Maybe you could explain why secrecy is necessary at all.”

“Were you on the job in ’ninety-three, detective?”

Jack nodded.

“I don’t know how much you remember about what happened back then, with the first attack on the World Trade Center, but it was a major cock-up. The men who plotted that bombing had been under surveillance by the FBI for some time, but the surveillance was dropped just months before the attack. And there were confidential informants who were handled quite poorly.”

Jack leaned forward. “What are you saying? There’s some kind of terrorist plot going on here?”

Charlson took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I can tell you that we’re in the middle of an investigation. But this kind of case is incredibly sensitive. You bring too many people into the loop and lives get jeopardized. Or plotters hear about surveillance and they go deep into hiding.”

Richie entered the conversation. “We understand. But we’re not some rookies, running around shooting our mouths off. We know how to run an undercover operation. Do you know who our perp is? Did you already have him under surveillance?”

Charlson spoke carefully. “We know who the man is.”

Richie gave Jack a look, then turned back to the fed. “No offense, but you’re making it sound like he’s some kind of high-level terrorist or something. The fact is, he killed a guy right out in the open. With a can of
beans
. He doesn’t sound very smart or stealthy to me.”

Charlson fixed the detective with an eagle eye. “You know how we caught the first bomber in ’ninety-three? Shortly after the attack, he returned to the car rental place where he had ordered the van they filled with explosives. He asked for the deposit back! Now, that doesn’t sound very smart or stealthy either, but that man and his comrades succeeded in blowing a gigantic crater in the basement of the North Tower.”

“All right,” Richie conceded. “But you’ve got our guy’s picture on videotape. Why don’t we just put it out there? We can probably scoop him up within a few hours.”

Charlson shook his head, as if he were talking to a child. “You’re not listening. If we spread the word that we know who this man is, his compatriots will go underground. And then we may
never
be able to stop them.”

Richie remained unimpressed. “How do you know this guy is even involved with anything? I work in Little Pakistan. I’ve seen how these people get implicated, called terrorists, just because somebody doesn’t like ’em and calls in a bum tip.”

Charlson stared at him, incredulous. “You live in New York City and you want to argue with me about whether this sort of threat is real? Where were you on Nine-eleven? Do you know how many funerals I attended that month, detective?”

Reluctantly, Richie backed off

“There are radical Islamic fundamentalists plotting in this city right this moment,” Charlson continued. “Make no mistake: these people will do everything they can to harm us and destroy our way of life. I check my intelligence reports very carefully. And I’m not about to let good information go to waste, as it did in ’ninety-three.” He gripped the edge of his desk. “I can promise you one thing: if something terrible goes down here, it’s not going to be because I just sat back and let it happen.”

Richie leaned forward, ready to go another round, but Jack intervened; he didn’t want the fed to get defensive and shut them out. “So why did this guy kill our deli victim? What was that about?”

Charlson shrugged. “I have no idea. These people are very highly strung. They’re angry—that’s why they become terrorists. Maybe your victim just looked at him the wrong way.”

Jack scratched his cheek, disappointed. He had hoped to at least have the reason for the killing cleared up. “Listen,” he said. “I understand what you’re saying about a need for discretion here. We won’t broadcast the guy’s picture. We won’t even send his name around. But we need to get him off the street. Why don’t you help us out, and we’ll be very tight-lipped about what’s going on, and we’ll bring him in real nice and quiet?”

Charlson frowned. “I don’t think you appreciate the dangers here. Are you equipped to deal with high levels of radioactivity? Do you know what radiation sickness does to a person?”

What Jack knew was that Charlson was eager to get credit for the arrest—typical fed—and he decided to play his bluff. “No problem—we’ll just call our Emergency Services Unit and let them deal with it.”

Charlson didn’t buy it. “You don’t have the proper equipment.”

Richie frowned. “What’s all this stuff about radiation, anyhow?”

Charlson remained impassive; he wasn’t going to give an inch.

Jack was done. “You know what? I’m sick and tired of all this agency rivalry and hush-hush bullshit. We’ll just find this guy on our own. And then maybe we’ll let you know about it, a few days later.” He stood up.

Charlson sat staring at him for a good long time. Finally, he moved closer to his desk and lowered his voice. “All right. You can sit down, detective. I’m going to swear both of you to complete and utter secrecy. If you’re indiscreet and the slightest word of this investigation leaks out,
anywhere
, I’m going to personally make sure the NYPD takes away your badges.
And
your pensions. Is that understood?”

Jack and his partner nodded.

Charlson turned to Richie. “Would you please get up and lock the door?”

“I
’M GOING TO LET
you in on a very interesting little tale,” Brent Charlson said. He reached into his pocket, took out a key, and unlocked a drawer of his desk. He pulled out a red manila folder and laid it on the leather blotter. “This story begins in the Gulf of Aden. Do you know where that is?”

Richie shrugged. “I’m gonna guess it’s not near the Long Island Sound.”

Charlson smiled benignly. “That’s right, detective. In fact, it’s about eight thousand miles away. The gulf connects the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, and it’s a crucial shipping lane for that part of the world. It runs past Somalia, unfortunately, which is a notoriously unstable country, overrun with radical Islamist rebels. The coast is very popular with pirates, who like to dash out into the gulf in speedboats and hijack commercial ships. Then they sit tight and demand large cash ransoms.”

He adjusted his eyeglasses, opened the folder, and stared down. “On December eighteenth of last year, one of these pirate crews took control of an Iranian merchant ship in the gulf. Supposedly, the vessel was laden with iron ore and ‘industrial products.’ Our investigation shows that the ship was owned and operated by the IRITC. That stands for Islamic Republic of Iran Transport Corporation, a state-owned company run by the Iranian military. After the pirates seized control of the ship, they sat back and demanded a ransom of two and a half million dollars.”

Richie interrupted. “Why wouldn’t the ship’s owners just go in and take it back by force? You said they were connected to the military, right?”

“Very simple: if the pirates were attacked, they could sink the ship. The potential loss might be much greater than the ransom demand. It’s a difficult problem.” Charlson sat back and steepled his hands together again. “Now, incidents like this are practically routine in the gulf—they get hundreds of pirate attacks every year. But what happened next was not routine. Not at all. While the Iranians were trying to decide what to do, the Somalis went poking around the cargo containers, just out of curiosity. After several days, some of them started to get very ill. They lost their hair and got mysterious skin burns. And then they began to die off, one by one.”

Jack whistled. “That wouldn’t be radiation sickness, by any chance?”

Charlson nodded. “That’s exactly what it was.”

Richie squinted. “The Iranians were transporting stuff for a nuclear power reactor? They’re hoping to build a bomb, right?”

“Good guess, but no.” Charlson stuck the folder back in the drawer and locked it away. “Now we’re getting into some very sensitive intelligence matters, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to skip over how we found out about all this. But the gist is that the ship was actually hired by a company in Pakistan. A front for a group of Islamic fundamentalists. And it wasn’t bound for Iran at all.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Guess where it was headed.”

Jack grimaced. “The port of New York?”

Charlson nodded. “Unfortunately, that’s correct.”

Richie frowned. “They already have a nuclear weapon? And they were trying to transport it over here?”

Charlson shook his head. “A standard nuclear weapon or its components wouldn’t give off that level of radiation. That’s the good news.”

Jack winced. “And the bad?”

Charlson leaned closer. “Are you gentlemen familiar with the term ‘dirty bomb’?”

“I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS!”
said Richie as he and Jack descended in the elevator. “Here I was thinking we had caught the most ordinary case in the world, some stupid neighborhood beef, and now it turns out that—”

“
Later
,” Jack said, gesturing with his eyes at the other occupants. “Let’s discuss it on the way home.”

They rode the rest of the way down in silence, mulling over what they had just heard.

Outside, Jack glanced back up at Brent Charlson’s office tower. Even under normal circumstances, he was not big on spending time in Manhattan. As a kid, he had grown up with a view of this borough right across the East River, but like many Brooklynites, he didn’t feel much need to visit. The center of New York City was just
too much
: too crowded, too tall, too loud, too fast-paced. Brooklyn felt more comfortable, a low flat plain of family homes, of neighborhoods where people knew and looked out for each other.

Today he was especially glad to be leaving. He wanted to get back on familiar turf, where he knew how to do his job and didn’t have to worry about world politics or any of this spy business. He couldn’t avoid it now, though—he had insisted on becoming more involved, and now he was, and it was a damned heavy weight. He looked up; the midtown skyscrapers felt as if they were pressing down on him, as if—at any second—bombs might go off and the buildings would come thundering down.

“Christ,” Richie said as he settled into the passenger seat. “What I wouldn’t give for a nice simple domestic violence case! Or somebody popped by a drug dealer.”

Jack pulled out into the busy stream of traffic moving up Third Avenue. “This is gonna be tricky,” he acknowledged. “We’re supposed to find the guy, but without making any damn noise.” He pondered what Charlson had told them. The fed had never really gotten around to explaining how their suspect—named
Nadim Hasni
—was tied in with the terrorist plot. The detectives had been about to press him on it, but the man had left for a briefing.