by Tom Clancy
That, of course, was the problem with his participation in what had been done New Year’s Eve. So much of it had been out of his hands from the beginning. And then there was the business of the satchel charge, the one that hadn’t gone off. He had suspected even before the press leaks that something like that had happened. The earliest stories on the news had mentioned only three explosions following the initial blast, and at the time he had optimistically hoped they were wrong. But he’d had his lingering doubts, and day by day the hard evidence had mounted, eventually becoming conclusive. Three explosions. Not four. This according to every eyewitness, every inch of video footage, every photograph taken at the scene. When the story surfaced that an undetonated bomb had been discovered and given over to the FBI for testing, he’d known it was all true. And had gotten to thinking. Could that possibly have been what Gilea and her people wanted? And if so, why? He’d been aware that they meant to throw a wrench into certain political developments between the United States and Russia ... but his biggest mistake had been to distance himself from the intricacies of their plan, and therefore remain half-blind to its intended outcome. Had he been caught up in a scheme that was more devious than he’d guessed? And if so, might it be that he was to be sacrificed as part of it?
It seemed like a lot of wild imagination ... but before the first of the year, the same might have been said about a bombing on the scale of what had occurred in Times Square. Suppose he’d been set up to take the heat? He had to wonder about that, in spite of how Gilea had acted toward him the night of the attack, and what they had done together afterward, done right here in his office ... or maybe because of it. She had been all over him that night. It had been as though she were on fire. As though the flames that had killed those hundreds of people had brought about an unquenchable heat of a different sort inside her body. He didn’t know how else to describe it. Gilea, Gilea. Here and then disappeared. What was he to make of her? A woman like that was capable of anything. Anything in the world.
And say he was getting carried away with his suspicions? Admittedly, he’d been on edge for the past couple of weeks. Say he was getting carried away, and he hadn’t been used as a pawn in some treacherous game, and the failure of the bomb to detonate was strictly an accident. Would the fact that it had nothing to do with Gilea’s planning make the position he was in right now any better? It didn’t have to be that he’d been double-crossed. Things went wrong, and people went down as a consequence. What had been worrying him was the possibility that analysis of the explosives would lead to a connection between the distributor and his import company. He was no expert when it came to the science, but he knew that might be done with certain kinds of testing. The authorities would want badly to make an arrest. How might the evidence be stacking up against him? He wasn’t sure yet, couldn’t be sure. But he wasn’t going to just stand around and wait for a gigantic fist to come crashing through his wall.
The wind thumped against his window, pelted it with sharp crystals of snow. The sound was loud enough to give Nick a start. Frowning, he cast off his thoughts with a visible shake of his head and returned to his desk.
He had done all that he could—for now, at any rate. He had his own men out, trying to discover what the Feds had learned—and throwing up smoke screens wherever they could. And if that wasn’t enough ... well, he had his insurance, his films of Gilea fondling the plastique. He was sure he’d be able to cut a deal if he had to.
He picked up the phone again, called downstairs, told his men to get his car warmed up. He wanted to forget his concerns for a while, wanted to sink himself deep into Marissa, wanted to relax.
Otherwise he might go crazy thinking about what might lie ahead.
TWENTY-EIGHT
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK JANUARY 16, 2000
“THERE’S NICKY AND HIS ZOO CREW,” BARNHART said.
Nimec sat beside him in the front passenger seat of the station wagon, looking out the windshield in silence.
“Like clockwork,” Noriko said from the vehicle’s rear section.
Nimec gave her a small nod but remained silent. They were in a parking space a half block down from the Platinum Club. Their engine and headlights were off. There was no heat issuing from the vents. A film of snow had formed on the glass, making it difficult to see through, but for the past few minutes they had refrained from clearing it with even intermittent swishes of the wipers.
They were being careful to do nothing that might draw attention.
His face intent, Nimec watched Roma walk toward the curb in front of the Platinum Club, the folds of an outback coat whipping around his ankles, a pair of hulking bodyguards on either side of him. Two more men were waiting on the street. The guards hung there until Roma got into the first of two large sedans that had pulled in front of the entrance, and then went back to the second car and crammed themselves into it.
Nimec and his team watched and waited. Snowflakes blew around them in tight little clots that burst apart like milkweed pods as they struck the hood of the wagon.
“He always surround himself with that much manpower?” Nimec said, breaking his silence at last.
Barnhart shrugged.
“The muscle’s a little thicker than usual,” he said. “Could be Nicky’s feeling a little paranoid these days. He likes to be prepared.”
Nimec thought about that. Barnhart, a former member of the FBI’s Organized Crime Task Force, had assembled an extensive file on Roma that went back years. In the past week Nimec had read every word of it, and learned nearly everything there was to know about Roma and his criminal network ... very significantly including information about his behind-the-scenes control of Mercury Distribution, an all-purpose clearinghouse for transport cargo, both legal and illegal, that he was moving into, out of, and around the country.
On November 28, Mercury had obtained delivery of a shipment of combined articles, marked generally as “theatrical effects,” the ultimate purchaser of which was Partners Inc., yet another of Roma’s multitude of shell companies, and the nominal owner of the Platinum Club.
The merchandise had arrived at the Red Hook shipyards aboard a freighter that belonged to the Zavtra Group.
Click-click-click.
“Rain, snow, sleet or hail, Nicky heads on over to his girlfriend’s crib every Monday night,” Barnhart said now, watching the automobiles carrying Roma and his crew swing away from the curb, make U-turns on Fifteenth Avenue, and then glide off in the opposite direction along the two-way street.
“Either he’s a creature of habit or she’s something else,” Noriko said.
“Probably a little of both,” Barnhart said. A smile touched his lips. “You jealous, Nori?”
“I’d rather mess around with an electric eel,” she said.
Nimec had been watching the taillights of the vehicles recede into the snow-clogged night. He waited for ten minutes after they were gone, listening to the snow rasp and rattle across the roof of the car. Then he glanced over at Barnhart, met Noriko’s eyes in the rearview, and nodded so both of his companions could see him.
The three of them pulled their Nomex hoods up over their heads.
“Here we go,” he said, and reached for the door handle.
TWENTY-NINE
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK JANUARY 16, 2000
NIMEC WAITED IN THE MOUTH OF THE ALLEY, STANDING lookout as Noriko and Barnhart moved through the shadows in back of the Platinum Club. Barnhart had a pair of cable cutters in one hand, a MagLite in the other. His Benelli pump gun was slung over his shoulder. They were leaving footprints in the snow, but there wasn’t much they could do about that. Besides, if Nick stayed true to form and didn’t come back until the next day, the footprints would have filled in before they were spotted.
The telephone connection box was mounted at eye level on a wall outside the building; on a surveillance run two nights earlier, Nori had found it by tracking the lines coming from a telephone pole on the adjacent side street.
She stopped n
ow and examined the rectangular metal box, moisture steaming from her nose and mouth, snow rustling between her ankles. After a moment, she reached out to Barnhart and he handed off the cable cutters, directing the flash beam onto the box. The phone wires entered the bottom of the box through a PVC plastic conduit. The same line, she knew, would be used to transmit signals from the alarm system to its monitoring station. Although it was possible Roma had installed a dedicated line for his system, or even a cellular-link backup, she doubted it. As a member of Barnhart’s undercover strike force during his years with the FBI, she had broken into many mob-controlled premises, and almost to a one had found them protected with crude, easily circumvented systems. Big Paul Castellano’s mansion on the hill had been the singular exception, but the Gambino family don had always held lordly pretensions. Not so Roma. He was a gangster of the old school and would undoubtedly rely on his heavies for security.
Noriko brushed some snow off the PVC conduit and opened the cable cutters around it. The air trembled with lightning. A food wrapper broke away from a trash spill up the alley, skittered past her foot. Her lips compressed with effort, she clipped the pipe halfway through, then rotated the cutters and clipped the other half of the pipe, exposing the insulated wires inside it. She severed them with a single quick cut.
Barring some unlikely fail-safe, the phones and external alarms were out of commission.
She passed the tool back to Barnhart and gestured to her left. Several yards farther along the wall, he could see a back door that opened into the alley. He nodded and they hastened over to it, Nori in the lead.
She crouched at the door as Barnhart turned his flash onto the lock plate below the knob. Then she produced a flat leather case from a patch pocket on her coveralls. Zipping open the case, she selected two needle-like steel shims from the large set inside it, clamped one between her teeth, and inserted the working end of the other into the keyhole. She raked it deftly across the bottom cylinder pins, felt one, then two, of them activate. Seconds later she extracted the pick from the keyway, switched it with the one in her mouth, and used the second to jiggle open the remaining tumblers.
The latch slid back with a metallic snick.
Noriko glanced over her shoulder at Barnhart and he nodded again. She reached for the doorknob. If there were a fire bar or something of that nature across the inside of the door, they would have to try to gain access from the street, where they would be in a much more visible—and risky—position.
She twisted the knob, applied slight pressure to the door with her shoulder.
It eased inward a crack.
“Abracadabra,” Barnhart muttered, squeezing her shoulder.
A relieved breath hissing out between her teeth, the tension draining from her muscles, Noriko carefully replaced the shims in their case and returned it to her pocket. Barnhart swung the MagLite toward the mouth of the alley and thumbed it on and off twice. Nimec returned the all-clear signal and sprinted out of the shadows to his companions, a nylon duffel bag in his hand.
Suddenly they heard the rumble of an engine, saw the yellow sweep of headlights on the snow-covered blacktop, and froze outside the door, waiting. A second ticked by. Another. Then a Sanitation Department snowplow went clattering past the alley, turned left at the corner, and moved off down the avenue.
Nimec motioned for them to enter the building.
Barnhart went in first, his tools in his pockets now, both hands around the pump gun. Its underbarrel light threw a tight conical beam into the gloom beyond the door. They could see a narrow back stairwell leading upward to the left, a hallway straight ahead of them.
Barnhart glanced at the others, angled his chin toward the steps, and started to climb them.
They followed him up without hesitation.
Lightning ripped into the street lamp on the corner of Eighty-sixth Street and Narrows Avenue just as Nick Roma’s car turned off Shore Road in that direction. His face registered surprise as the sodium bulb flared brightly and then blew in terminal overload, sprinkling the road with its jagged, smoking remains. On the Lincoln’s radio the voice of Michael Bolton dissolved into snaps, crackles, and pops.
“Son of a bitch,” the driver muttered.
In the backseat, Roma stared out his window. All along the avenue, spindly winter-bare trees swayed in the wind roaring off Gravesend Bay.
He shot a glance at the dash clock.
“It’s almost eleven-thirty,” Nick said edgily. “What the hell’s taking you so long to get where we’re going?”
“It’s this fucking weather,” the driver said. “I take it any faster, our wheels’ll be all over the road.”
Roma responded with an indeterminate grunt. He wondered if Marissa would be wearing that short, white lacy thing he’d given her last week. Wondered how fast he would peel her out of it once he stepped through her door. God, God, he was so coiled with tension, so wound up with need, he didn’t think he’d be able to wait until they got into bed. Maybe later they would take a bath together, bring one of his bottles of wine with them ...
“Shit!” he said abruptly, slapping his leg in frustration. What was wrong with him? The wine. He’d forgotten the goddamn wine at the club.
He glanced over his shoulder at the sedan following behind them, glad he’d instructed his bodyguards to stick close until he reached Marissa’s. At least now they’d have a chance to make themselves useful.
“Val, listen to me,” he said, leaning forward over the seat rest. “Call the others. There’s a plastic bag in my office, near the desk. It has two bottles of wine in it. Tell them to head back and get it, bring it over to the girl’s place, and ring her bell. I’ll come to the door and take it from them.”
Val nodded, took one hand off the steering wheel, reached for the flip phone in his pocket.
“And Val ... ?”
The driver briefly met his eyes in the rearview.
“Tell them to be quick about it,” Roma said.
“Our boy Nicky’s been living the high life,” Barnhart said quietly, angling his underbarrel flash into the plastic bag beside Roma’s desk. The light glinted off two bottles of red wine. “He’s got a couple bottles of Chambertin just sitting around in here.”
“And expensive cologne,” Noriko whispered. She was at the desk opening drawers, her hand feeling around inside them. “Seems to be it, though. There’s zip in these drawers. No papers, no pens, not even a stick of chewing gum.”
Barnhart stepped over to her, pulled one of the drawers completely off its tracks, and set it on the floor. Then he reached back into its empty slot, searching for hidden compartments.
Meanwhile, Nimec was moving along the walls, sliding his gloved hands over them, probing for a recessed safe or cabinet. The only hidden devices they’d found so far were Nick’s giant television, theater-quality sound system, and a VCR/DVD reader that fed both systems. Predictably, the disk in the hopper was the first Godfather movie. But there were no other tapes, no disks, nothing else in any way unusual. The office was a blank slate. They had been inside the room for five minutes, and Nimec wanted to be out within ten. So far they’d been lucky, having located the office almost as soon as they reached the upstairs landing—aside from the entrance to a stockroom, there weren’t any other doors along the short, dead-end corridor—and its lock had presented no more of an obstacle to Nori than the one downstairs. Still, there wasn’t a moment to waste.
Finding nothing immediately, Nimec paused, looking around. Even in the darkness, he could see that the place was fastidiously neat and clean. If there were squirrel holes, Roma would be careful to keep them well camouflaged.
His gaze fell on the mirrored wall opposite the door and he turned quickly to Barnhart, tapping his arm.
“Shine the light at the mirror,” he said, pointing. “Start over toward the middle.”
Barnhart nodded and swung the Benelli around.
As Nimec moved closer to the wall, Barnhart’s flash shone on the floor-to-ceili
ng panels, throwing starry winks of brightness into the room.
Nimec’s eyes slid up and down the wall. Gesturing with his hand, he silently directed Barnhart to shift the flash to the left, signaled him to bring it down a little, then sliced his palm through the air in a halting gesture.
“You see that?” he said in an excited whisper. “Hold it steady. Right there.”
Barnhart nodded again. With the beam hitting the panel straight on, he could see a tiny area, no more than a half inch in diameter, in which its surface seemed to be transparent, as if there were a chipped or bald patch on the reflective layer behind it. Then he realized the spot was a perfect circle—much too perfect to be any kind of defect.
Nimec was practically standing flat against the mirror now, pressing down on it with the heel of his hand.
At the same moment that Barnhart realized he was looking at a two-way mirror, the panel opened out into the room, almost like the door of a medicine cabinet.
“My, my,” he said, training his light into the cubby behind it. “What have we here?”
Nimec knew there was no need for him to answer. What they very obviously had was a covert video-recording system—a surveillance camera and portable duplicating unit for creating automatic backup tapes. The blank round eye of the camera was lined up with the transparent part of the wall mirror and pointed directly into the room. Roma might not keep written records of his various dealings, Nimec thought, but that clearly did not mean he was without any records at all.
He stood there looking into the hollow space. On a shelf below the electronic components were three or four scattered videotapes and a sheet of color-coded adhesive labels. The cassettes themselves were unlabeled.
