by Dick Wolf
The terrorist jerked back in his chair.
Fisk’s reach stopped at the empty baker’s foil cup on the table, crumpling it in his hand, swiping the crumbs into the carton.
“You flinched,” said Fisk.
Jenssen trembled, as if about to explode with anger. Fisk’s eyes remained unwaveringly on Jenssen’s face as he retrieved the cloth hood and pulled it down over Jenssen’s head.
He paused a moment, lowering his head to Jenssen’s ear.
“Have fun dying in prison,” said Fisk.
CHAPTER 13
Mid-September
New York City
Fisk spent most of his morning in the Midtown North precinct, because one of the diplomats from Ghana had spent most of his night there.
United Nations Week wasn’t supposed to be like the navy’s Fleet Week, but for some a short week in the capital of the world was like a Las Vegas convention. The man from Ghana had hired a prostitute who visited him at his room in the Millennium Broadway Hotel. The police only became involved when the escort called them, after Mr. Ghana neglected to come up with the entire agreed-upon fee. There was a currency problem as well as a language problem and a bit of a vodka problem, and then apparently a cultural misunderstanding, and Mr. Ghana wound up in a pair of dirty bracelets, necessitating a six-hour sojourn in Midtown North.
The working girl was let go with a warning, but never recompensed the remaining two hundred dollars she was owed.
Fisk caught the guy’s ticket after a flurry of phone calls and drove over to pick up Mr. Ghana. Only problem was, Mr. Ghana’s shoes had gone missing. They had his belt, his wallet, and his passport, but no loafers. Chasing those down ate up another forty minutes of Fisk’s time. The only upside was that, once he got his shoes back, Mr. Ghana was all smiles and very happy to be chauffeured directly to his consulate on East Forty-seventh Street.
Fisk finally returned to Intel headquarters in Brooklyn—a shabby-looking, unmarked, one-story brick building on a block of auto junkyards and warehouses—just in time for a call about a suspicious car parked outside the Chinese consulate over on the West Side. This dustup was solved with two phone calls: as Fisk suspected, it was the host nation’s own federal police force, the FBI, clumsily keeping tabs on the Chinese envoy in a gray Dodge Avenger.
“Your guys might want to move farther down the street,” said Fisk, on the phone with the FBI field office at Federal Plaza, rubbing it in a little.
CHAPTER 14
In late August, the same week Jenssen’s verdict was read, Fisk’s boss, Barry Dubin, had called him into his office.
The Intel chief was a bald egghead with an impeccably groomed goatee that hung on his face like a soft silver pennant. Ever since his divorce, Dubin wore his chunky Fordham class ring on his ring finger, which Fisk never understood. Maybe he hadn’t been able to give up his habit of twirling something on the fourth finger of his left hand.
The NYPD’s Intelligence Division was formed following the New York City terror attack of September 11, 2001. The police commissioner at the time, tired of seeing his hometown serve as the favorite target for terrorists, determined that nobody could take better care of New York City than the men and women of New York’s Finest themselves.
Many police forces across the country had bolstered their budgets and departments in the wake of 9/11—from large cities to small towns, law enforcement expenditures rose precipitously throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century—but only one municipal agency created its own mini-CIA. The Counter-Terrorism Bureau of the NYPD was the public side of their efforts. It liaised with the Joint Terrorism Task Force, an amalgam of law enforcement agencies with a mandate to trade information and cooperation.
But the true face of counterterrorism in the NYPD, the Intelligence Division, was little known and rarely seen. For example, while undercover work is a staple of every big-city police department, no other urban law enforcement organization in the nation worked as aggressively to infiltrate potential terror cells as the Intel Division did. Its employees and advisors included various former national and international espionage experts, educated in the tradecraft of information gathering, interdiction, and threat assessment. Intel analyzed intelligence, gathered both by human means and electronically through the five boroughs that comprised New York City, cultivating a broad network of informers—both sympathetic and reluctant.
Recently, however, the Intel Division had seen a backlash, particularly in the press. This, officials knew, was the downside to success. The ten-man Demographics Unit drew fire for keying in on ethnic hot spots for incubating terrorism, including mosques, coffeehouses, and pizza parlors: 262 hot spots in all. They cranked out report after report but never developed a single concrete lead as to any plot. Of course, one uncovered plot would have justified the entire operation, but the difference between zero and one was a big one. Profiling in general had become a dirty word, in no small part due to Fisk’s own capture of blond, blue-eyed, Swedish Muslim terrorist Magnus Jenssen.
Surveillance on Muslims continued to be a controversial subject, especially since the perpetrators of recent successful terror incidents—such as the Boston Marathon bombing—were not members of any identifiable cell or larger network of bad actors. Rogue criminals were the hardest to catch.
The most recent blow to Intel’s profile had come in the form of several million e-mails passed on to WikiLeaks, many of which discussed or involved secondhand allegations of civil liberties violations committed by the NYPD’s secret mini-CIA. This same batch of e-mails also pulled back the lid on continuing tensions between Intel Division and the New York JTTF.
Nothing had been ordered, but the sense among the rank-and-file Intel operatives was that the division’s previous mandate—that of locating and neutralizing pockets of domestic militancy before they became fully radicalized terror cells capable of threatening life and limb in New York City—was being drawn back into something less invasive. There was a difference of opinion inside the division, whether this was indeed the product of success and would weaken Intel’s abilities, or whether this was a necessary shift in technique, nearly fifteen years after 9/11.
Coincidentally or not, Intel had lost a few key advisors to private-sector jobs recently, as the patriotic urgency that the commissioner had used to strong-arm experts into working more hours for less pay no longer held sway. Whenever asked, Fisk always said that he was paid not to have an opinion on these matters. His job remained the same: stop terrorism.
“How are you feeling?” asked Dubin.
Fisk’s least favorite question. One he was asked at least five times each day. It was like asking a cancer survivor, “Still in remission?” Sometimes he thought that people were afraid he might suffer a breakdown in the room with them, and wanted a heads-up so they could be somewhere else when it happened.
“Feeling fine,” said Fisk.
“Glad to see you’re physically cleared for duty. No aftereffects from the radiological poisoning?”
“None,” Fisk lied.
“I’d say you’re damned lucky.”
“Well, there is the matter of the extra toes. Buying shoes is a real pain in the ass.”
Dubin smiled after a moment. “I get it,” he said. “No more questions. I’ll stop showing any hint of concern for your well-being.”
“I appreciate it,” said Fisk.
“As to the psych thing, it was a box we had to put a check mark in. Sometimes I think it’s more about choice. God knows there are guys on the force who use an after-action inquiry to malinger and call it a vacation. I say good riddance to those guys. Most everybody who wants to stay, stays. I knew you wanted to stay.”
Fisk nodded.
Dubin blew out a breath and twirled his class ring. “Still, we’re going to continue to ease you back into things.”
Fisk sighed. “I’m using my highly trained cop instincts to guess that you’re leading up to something you think I’m not going to like.”
This was code for desk duty. Fisk’s reaction surprised him. He showed Dubin nothing, but inside his chest he felt the sensation of a tight fist easing open, just a bit. It was relief.
Dubin went on, “We’re going to turn back the clock a bit on Intel in the coming weeks. Can you guess why?”
Fisk did not follow him, at first.
“Before 9/11, Intel was primarily an EP unit. Executive protection. Escorting visiting dignitaries around the city and providing them some security, but really the air of importance. These were generally foreign politicians who liked to be handled. Back then Intel was a cushy preretirement assignment, the waiting room before the twenty-year handshake. Taxi drivers with badges.”
Fisk got it now. “UN Week.”
United Nations Week occurred around the opening of the General Assembly at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Heads of state, ministers, and other diplomats from the member states, as well as various nongovernmental organizations, arrived in New York for the annual general debate.
“Obviously,” said Dubin, “we’re not going to be ferrying these tourists around the city. But as you know, a lot of that post-9/11 money dried up during the recession, and every department is being asked to do more with less. We are tasked with security measures and contingency planning.”
Fisk crossed his legs. “Spreadsheets,” he said, with the force of a filthy invective.
“Some of that. I’m not taking this lightly, though, and neither will you. The grand finale is the president coming to town to address the assembly and sign a narcoterrorism treaty with Mexico. Also known as ‘the worst traffic day in New York.’ Besides, the president requested you personally.”
Fisk barely even shook his head. He could not exactly tell his boss to screw himself. “Enough,” he said.
Everybody ribbed him about being President Obama’s good buddy after saving his life at the Freedom Tower dedication. Fisk used to play along with it—“we’re going to a Nationals game this weekend”—but by now it was so old and tired he couldn’t even muster the energy for a flip response.
The president had been perfectly gracious to him, but—as the saying goes—they didn’t keep in touch. Fisk had, however, received an autographed photo from President Bush, forty-three, with an inscription Fisk had never been able to make out.
“Anyway,” said Dubin, “after that, we can see about getting you back out on the street. Assuming that’s what you want, of course.”
“I do,” said Fisk.
Dubin nodded, pausing, looking as though he wasn’t sure he wanted to say what he was going to say next.
“A lot of people thought you were going to jump to the feds after the Freedom Tower save,” he said. “Lord knows you’ve got all the tools. Brainy cop with street instincts. Languages. FBI would love to get their hands on you. CIA, too.”
Fisk thought back to his recent meeting with Dave Link and briefly wondered if there was any connection here.
“You’d be a natural,” continued Dubin. “And you could command better than a detective two’s salary.”
“This sounds like a good time to ask for a raise,” said Fisk.
“Denied,” said Dubin quickly, with a smile. “Seriously. We’re glad you’re back. Weird time here, lots of things in flux. Sometimes that creates opportunities, you know?”
For advancement, he meant. Fisk wasn’t sure he wanted that either. “Sometimes it eliminates them,” said Fisk, referring to the rocky road Intel had been on recently.
Dubin put his hands on his desk and stood. “Let’s make this a quiet, incident-free UN Week and go from there.”
CHAPTER 15
Fisk’s task was mostly administrative. Drunk tanks aside, he was not spending his days standing out at the exit gate at JFK wearing a chauffeur’s hat and holding a small whiteboard with some dignitary’s name misspelled on it. Security was paramount, and that took a great deal of coordination. But now, as the General Assembly had opened and the week was under way, things were getting hairy. At its worst, his job was akin to herding cats. Cats who drove cars with diplomatic license plates. Cats with their own security service people. Cats with varying fluency in the English language.
Security aside, life in the city had slowed noticeably, especially on the East Side. Fisk wondered what the exact algorithm was, the relation between the number of automobiles with diplomatic plates and the density of New York City traffic.
Diplomats parked anywhere. Loading zones, valet drop-offs, cab stands, but especially out in front of hotels. Gridlock outside the Waldorf had turned Park Avenue into a parking lot north of Grand Central Terminal. Traffic patterns weren’t Fisk’s concern, but the speed of incident response was, so he had to plan for it.
All in all, he was surprised at how okay he was with the assignment. It was challenging and it allowed him to focus. Alternatively, being off the street full-time kept him away from the places and people he associated with Krina Gersten. She hadn’t just been a colleague, she had been his girlfriend, and he was finding it difficult to move back into life at Intel Division full-time. Despite what he had told Dubin, he had been thinking about other opportunities elsewhere. But for him it wasn’t about moving up, it was about moving on. Every success had come with a grievous loss of life. It seemed to Fisk like there wasn’t much left for him here at Intel.
Fisk had been living under a dark cloud both professionally and personally for the past year. Maybe it was time to go out in search of blue skies elsewhere.
He disliked his lack of direction but felt stuck, rudderless. And if Fisk wasn’t decisive, then he wasn’t anything at all.
“Fisk!” It was Bluestein, over on the Threat Desk. “Line two.”
Fisk picked up. “This is Fisk.”
“How ya doin’?” The accent was outer borough and strong, that of a man who probably had not spent more than twenty minutes outside the environs of the city of New York. Fisk heard something that was either distant traffic or a steady wind blowing into the caller’s cell phone. “My captain said I should call you.”
Fisk rubbed his forehead. The prime minister of Canada lock his keys out of his car? An envoy from Poland get in a fender bender? “Who are you and what can I do for you?”
“Kiser at the One-oh-one. Robbery Homicide.”
Fisk picked up a pen. “Rockaway?”
“The Mediterranean of the east. You hear about this thing yet?”
Fisk said, “Just got back to my desk. What thing?”
It was definitely wind, whipping at the phone, making it difficult for Fisk to hear Kiser, whose response sounded like, “The heading thing.”
Fisk said, “This sounds like a mistake, Robbery Homicide. I’m on UN Week duty here. You got a diplomatic threat out in Rockaway?”
Kiser said, “Judging by the tattoos, I’d say these bodies definitely aren’t diplomats.”
Fisk said, “You said ‘bodies’?”
Kiser said, “This is maybe a little more serious than you’re expecting. Let me give you an address for your GPS and you can come on down to the beach.”
CHAPTER 16
Fisk badged his way inside the perimeter, parking in a sand-strewn beach parking lot that was a portrait of the desolation of the end of summer. Mostly empty and silent under an overcast sky. He stood out of his vehicle, and a burst of wind brought gritty particles of sand to his face, as well as a hint of ocean spit. Nothing dies so alone as a summer beach in September.
He crossed the boardwalk into the dunes. Dress shoes walking in sand. He followed a path through the sea grass, at first trying to be careful, taking shallow steps. Then the first spoonful of sand beneath his heel and it was over. Only pride kept him from rolling up his pant cuffs and walking out there barefoot. Another pair of shoes ruined.
“I’m looking for Kiser?” Fisk said at least three times. A Crime Scene Unit photographer finally heading back t
o his car pointed Fisk down the shore. He saw a dozen or so uniformed cops standing around a temporary fence of white plastic sheeting whipping in the wind and started toward it.
Nothing out on the horizon, no barges, tankers, or pleasure boats. The sky was gray but visibility was good. Fisk shivered and stuck his hands in his pockets, and it was the first climate-related chill he had felt since at least June.
“Kiser?” said Fisk, finally reaching the crime scene.
A slight man in his forties looked up from his notepad. He wore khakis and a pink button-down shirt with a heavy, wrinkled, unzipped all-weather jacket. He had a fringe of dark hair, just enough to clip his yarmulke.
“Fisk?” he said, offering his hand.
Fisk shook. He could not see over the top of the plastic sheeting yet. Most of the cops standing around it were holding the wooden stakes into the sand, keeping the temporary fence from lifting off and tumbling back to the parking lot.
Kiser said, “I know you?” Then, seemingly in reference to Fisk’s name: “I thought so.”
He stood looking at Fisk a moment, placing him as the guy who got Jenssen. The pause was not one of admiration or respect, but more along the lines of Why is this guy riding the UN Week desk?
Fisk, referring to the fence, said, “How bad is it?”
“It’s grim. Worse than grim.”
Fisk figured it was violent. That was why the plastic sheeting. The Post loved making a front-page meal out of murder scenes. Fisk looked up at the dunes. Any one of them could have hidden some punk with a four-hundred-millimeter lens.
“Killed here or dumped?”
“Dumped,” said Kiser, with a nod of certainty. “We tried scouting the sand for tire tracks, footprints, but this thing happened overnight.”
Fisk stepped over to the fence. He was unprepared for what he saw.
“Jesus.”
Kiser said, “A baker’s dozen. There were seagulls picking at them. Dog walker found them.”
The bodies had been decapitated. Thirteen of them, all shoulders, trunks, and limbs. Amazing how incomplete and inhuman a body looks when the head is gone.
