The Lost Codex (OPSIG Team Black Series Book 3)

by Alan Jacobson

  Johnson had taken it upon himself to get a pitcher of Reade Street dark ale for his visitors, which Vail noted almost before she reached the table. Fahad ordered a black coffee.

  They all shook hands, Vail and Uzi leading the introductions—with DeSantos and Fahad foregoing mention of their employers. The idea was to give the impression that all of them were with the Bureau. Say CIA or Department of Defense, and some detectives clammed up. As it was, they were not keen on cooperating with Feds. But if an FBI task force had been set up for the robbery, the agreement governing it would have prevented Steve Johnson from even talking to them. One detective famously refused to give his own chief details of a case—and the chief was so pissed off that he tried to have the man transferred to a different precinct for refusing his request.

  “You know,” Vail said, “I gotta ask, because I see the resemblance. You wouldn’t be one of Leslie Johnson’s relatives—brother, maybe?”

  “Older brother, yeah. You know Lee?”

  “We partnered together. I’m ex-NYPD. Haven’t talked to her in a year, year and a half. How’s she doing?”

  “Just passed the sergeant’s exam.”

  “Good for her. Give her a hug for me. And my congrats.”

  “Thanks for meeting with us,” Uzi said. “We’re up against the clock.”

  “You know we’re talking about a bank robbery here, right? Nothing too sexy. Or really that important. No one was killed. They came in at night.”

  “We’re looking at the perp for something else.” And that’s really all we can say.

  Johnson lifted his brow and harumphed. “You know there was a Fed who worked it too. Guy by the name of Tarkenton, or something like that.”

  “Patrick Tarkenton. Yeah, I left a message. Anything you can tell us about the robbery?”

  “I brought you a copy of our file. You obviously got some juice up top with the brass.”

  Vail had to keep herself from laughing. If it’s juice, it’d be poisoned. “I still have a friend or two.” Gotta remember to thank Russo. That’s probably why this guy’s here, helping out a bunch of Feds after a long shift. She took the file, splayed it open, and shared it with DeSantos.

  “How sophisticated was it?” Uzi asked.

  Johnson swallowed a mouthful of beer. “They got a lot of stuff, so I’d say it was successful. In my book, that’s what matters, not how sophisticated it was.”

  Fahad dumped a packet of sugar into his coffee. “I’d normally agree with you. But that’s not the case here.”

  “They used bombs.” Vail looked up from the file. “They blew the vault mechanism with C4.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Johnson said. “We looked at that pretty hard because not everyone can get C4. But your lab didn’t find anything that could help us trace it. Oh, and they used something else I’d never heard of.”

  DeSantos pointed to a paragraph of the report. “Triacetone triperoxide. TATP.”

  Johnson snapped his fingers. “Give that man a cigar.”

  Vail wiped at her glass with a finger, making a line in the condensation. That confirms it for me. There’s a connection here. But it’s not adding up.

  “Our EOD guys said something about TATP being easy to get, but really dangerous to work with. Funny, because I remember thinking, if they can get C4, why use that other stuff?”

  “Did you ever figure it out?”

  Johnson drained his glass, then set it down and poured another. “They thought they needed the C4 to blow the locking mechanism and the TATP to give it extra power behind the blast. C4’s hard to get. Maybe they could only get a small amount.”

  “What’d they take?”

  “Some jewelry, some bonds, some cash. Usual stuff. I mean, the kind of shit people usually put in safe deposit boxes. Nothing stood out, to be honest with you.”

  “And you never caught ’em?” Uzi asked as his phone vibrated. He stole a look at the display and then pushed his chair back to take the call.

  “No. And we got nothing off the security cameras.”

  “How many were there?” Fahad asked.

  “Three inside, one spotter outside. Wore ski masks. Never did any other jobs, least not that we could tell.”

  Johnson leaned back from the table. “Ah … gotta go use the head.” He glanced at his watch, then stood up. “Give me a minute, will ya?”

  DeSantos watched Johnson move off toward the front of the bar, then turned to Vail. “You look like you’re onto something.”

  Uzi finished his call and swiveled back toward the table.

  Vail cocked her head, considering DeSantos’s comment. “Maybe. Just trying to reason it out. Think this through with me: they went after the vault, not the safe. There’s a lot more cash in the safe. I don’t know what the local thrift keeps on hand these days, but it’s gotta be a sizable figure. Tens of thousands?”

  “Depends on a lot of factors,” Uzi said. “That sounds about right. So what?”

  “So he’s got no idea what’s in the safe deposit boxes—it’s a wild card. Could be some diamond rings, but maybe not.”

  “Unless they knew what was in there,” Uzi said. “They knew someone who banked there and had a box.”

  Fahad twirled his glass. “First thing to follow up on tomorrow, when the bank’s open.”

  “Would you like to put a print with a name?” Uzi said with a grin. “Our upstanding citizen is—or was—Haddad Sadeq.”

  Vail gestured at Fahad. “Mean anything to you?”

  He thought a moment, then sighed in resignation. “No.”

  Uzi glanced at Fahad, then said, “Sadeq was an operative for al Humat.”

  “Where’d you get that?” Fahad asked.

  Uzi hesitated, then said, “Not important.”

  Fahad pushed his chair back and faced Uzi full-on. “Bullshit. It is important.”

  “A reliable source.”

  “We’re a team, right? Why won’t you tell me?”

  “Do you reveal all your confidential sources?”

  “Of course not. But with this group, we’ve got to trust one another completely, or it won’t work.”

  Uzi stared hard at Fahad. Vail sensed there was something he wanted to say, but couldn’t. Why?

  “Boychick, Mo’s right.”

  Uzi clenched his jaw, then said, “Mossad. A guy I know. That’s all I can say.”

  Fahad absorbed this information without any outward reaction.

  Vail examined her glass, took a sip. “We’re missing an important point. We’ve got a group of bank robbers that hit a local thrift, the target being its safe deposit boxes. They get jewelry, cash, other shit. But does that make sense?”

  “No,” Uzi said.

  “No. It doesn’t. Sadeq was a known operative of al Humat, and al Humat is a terror organization. They’re not into robbing banks. It’s not their MO. Islamic State, yeah. But not Hamas. Not al Humat. They get their funding other ways.”

  “Your point?” Fahad asked.

  Vail spread her hands. “So there had to be something in that vault that they were really going after. They knew it was there—and I’m willing to bet they got what they came for.”

  Johnson returned to the table tugging on his belt, readjusting his trousers.

  “I’ll get the next round,” DeSantos said, then went to the bar to get another pitcher.

  “You have a list of the victims?” Vail asked, thumbing through the file. “The ones who lost stuff in the theft?”

  “I got some. FBI took the lead on all follow-up. There should be something in there,” he said, wiggling an index finger at the file. “But safe deposit boxes aren’t insurable, and the bank doesn’t cover those losses. Most people don’t know that. They think it’s the safest place they can keep shit, but it’s not. I mean, if someone breaks in, there’s
nothing protecting them.”

  “So there might not be incentive for someone to report their losses,” Vail said.

  Johnson thought about that. “Yeah, I guess. But if we’re asking them what was stolen, why wouldn’t they tell the truth?” Almost as if he realized the answer before he finished asking the question, he said, “Oh.”

  Yeah, if they’ve got something illegal in the box, they’re certainly not going to tell the police when it’s stolen.

  DeSantos returned to the table with the pitcher, then filled everyone’s glass.

  “This case you’re working,” Johnson said. “Sounds big. Like it’s got nothing to do with bank robbery.”

  Vail raised her glass and clinked it against Johnson’s. “Detective, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  20

  The following morning, they met Agent Patrick Tarkenton at the FBI field office at Federal Plaza. Vail had considered Russo’s offer to stay at his place in midtown, but the thought of spending any time with Sofia, his wife, made her graciously decline. Instead, she bunked with the rest of the group at a cheap motel in Flushing, near Citi Field and just outside Manhattan.

  When they met in the lobby, they had a message from Fahad stating that he would not be joining them but would touch base later.

  “That’s weird,” DeSantos said.

  “Maybe he’s following up on something. Or maybe he had something to deal with on a case.”

  Uzi frowned. “Or maybe it’s something else.”

  “Give it a rest,” DeSantos said. “You gotta let it go.”

  They rode the subway into the city and spent half an hour walking through the case with Agent Tarkenton. He retrieved the file and handed it to Vail, who began reading through it.

  Tarkenton explained that he did not have much information to offer—nothing more than Johnson had given them—and said that because the reported losses totaled only about $11,500, with no repeat or prior heists matching the robbers’ MO, investigation of the theft dropped on their list of priorities.

  “Since there are three of you asking questions about a cold case robbery, I assume there’s more to it than that. Have they hit another bank?”

  “Something a hell of a lot more serious,” Uzi said. “The bombing at Eastern Market in DC? We found one of the bombers’ fingers there. Print matches the latent you pulled from the bank’s vault. Our suspect isn’t a bank employee and we doubt he was one of the safe deposit box holders.”

  Tarkenton absorbed this, then his eyes widened slightly. “You’re saying our bank robber is your suicide bomber?”

  “Right.”

  Tarkenton sat back from the conference room table and appraised his colleagues. “Hey, I worked up the case, gave it the attention it deserved at the time. I did my due diligence and I filed my paperwork with headquarters. My squad supervisor signed off.”

  “And yet,” DeSantos said, “here we sit.”

  Vail closed the file Tarkenton had given her. “Name’s Haddad Sadeq, an operative with al Humat.”

  “You’re shitting me.” He studied their faces a moment. “I had—I mean, how was I supposed to know?”

  Vail pushed the folder across the table toward Tarkenton. “We’ll need a full list of the victims, the people whose boxes were broken into.”

  “Isn’t there one in here?” He grabbed the file and started rifling through it. “Must be on the server. I’ll get you a printout before you leave.”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, they were sitting in the Pershing Square Central Café, across from Grand Central Station. The increased police presence, a result of the elevated terror alert, was evident with Hercules teams—specially trained Emergency Service Unit cops outfitted in helmets, Kevlar vests, and submachine guns—and critical response vehicles traversing the city’s streets.

  Vail had eaten in the restaurant a few times, but it had been many years. Nevertheless, the area was filled with memories of the time she spent patrolling New York City streets as a cop, then as a detective … and then as a green FBI agent.

  A few blocks away sat Bryant Park, where the Hades serial killer had left a victim four years ago. The image of the body—of that case as a whole, which consumed nearly twenty years of her career as a law enforcement officer—still bothered her.

  Although the café was wedged beneath the Park Avenue viaduct, it was bright and cheery inside because it had a wall of windows looking out onto Park. At 7:30 AM, the place was buzzing with diners and waiters rushing from table to table, bumping into customers, spilling a bit of milk off a tray, or almost toppling a nearby platter. This morning the restaurant lived up to its motto: “The busiest and best breakfast in New York.”

  Despite the commotion, Vail, DeSantos, and Uzi were absorbed in their conversation, cups of high octane java by their elbows and a plate of bagels with smoked salmon, capers, and cream cheese in the center of the table.

  They each had a list of people whose safe deposit boxes were emptied. Notes were written across Vail’s copy. She was scanning the document a fifth time when DeSantos interrupted her thoughts.

  “You got that name from Aksel.”

  Uzi did not look up from the paper. “Yeah. I’ve been keeping him in the loop. He’s given me some valuable intel.”

  DeSantos bit into his piled-high bagel and spoke while he chewed. “So you two have patched things up?”

  Uzi lifted his brow. “I guess. I don’t know. We haven’t talked about it. Right now it’s a relationship of necessity. We’ve got a situation and we’re professionals trying to figure it out.”

  “Good. I know he means something to you. I know it hurt when you thought he betrayed you.”

  Uzi turned his attention back to the paper. “Depends on how you look at it. It’s complicated.”

  “I know.”

  Vail set her pen down. “So I’ve done an analysis—” She stopped and glanced at them. “Am I interrupting?”

  “Go on,” DeSantos said.

  “I’ve gone through the names and sorted them by ethnicity. By my estimation, and based on the info Tarkenton had in the database, twenty were Italian, fourteen were Irish, nine were Jewish, five were Greek, four were Hispanic.”

  “So it’s a typical cross-section of New York.”

  Vail shrugged. “I guess so. But that’s not what’s important.”

  “Just means we’ve got a lot of people to interview.”

  “It’s easier than that,” Uzi said. “It’s al Humat, right? They’re not interested in Italians, or Irish, or Greeks, or Hispanics—”

  “Jews,” Vail said. She thumbed through the document again, going back to the first page. “Here. We’ve got one who’s a rabbi from Aleppo.”

  “Syria?” DeSantos asked, scanning the page and finding the name on his list.

  “Moved to Brooklyn twenty-five years ago. Another works at a camera store in midtown, and another is a registered nurse at Bellevue—” She stopped and paged backward. “But this has to be it. A former Syrian Jew? And an al Humat operative? I smell a connection. There’s something there. This is the guy we’ve gotta go see first.”

  Uzi shrugged. “Seems right to—”

  Vail’s phone rang. She pulled it and found Carmine Russo’s caller ID prominently displayed, along with his photo.

  “Russo—”

  “You still in New York?”

  “Yeah. Just getting started.”

  “Meet me in Times Square.”

  “Times Square? Are you kidd—”

  “Trust me, Karen. It’ll be worth your while.”

  21

  They arrived ten minutes later but had to stop two blocks short of the address Russo texted her because of a barricade of NYPD police vans and cruisers. A light rain had begun to fall and the sky had darkened, threatening a storm. It was not cold enough for snow, but the s
mell of it was in the air.

  “You text Mo?” DeSantos asked as they exited their sedan.

  “I did,” Vail said. “Told him we were on our way, gave him the address. He didn’t reply.”

  Uzi gave DeSantos a concerned look.

  “I’m sure he’s just following up on some things.” DeSantos hesitated, then said, “But it is very weird, I’ll give you that. Maybe his phone died.”

  Vail displayed her credentials and pulled up her collar as they headed toward the north area of Times Square. They made their way through the crowd of officers at Broadway and 47th Street, where the humongous billboards flickered, changed colors, blinked, and rolled. The brightly lit Coca-Cola advertisement made Vail feel thirsty.

  Ahead of them was an imposing fifteen-foot-tall statue of Father Francis Duffy and the aptly named Duffy Square, which consisted of rising stadium-style seating that canted over the roof of the TKTS discount Broadway box office. On a normal day, a video camera projected live footage of the people seated on the stands onto a large overhead LED screen.

  It was not difficult to see where the focus of the crime scene was, as the camera was still transmitting.

  “Shut that thing off. C’mon, dumbshit. Can’t be that hard to flip a friggin’ switch.”

  It was Captain Carmine Russo, standing inside the crime scene barricade, a dozen feet forward of the imposing statue.

  “Russo.”

  He turned and saw Vail, then pushed past the men in his way. He gave her a hug. She made introductions and Russo shook their hands. “So you’re Uzi,” he said. “Thanks again for your help with Hades.”

  “All in a day’s work.” Uzi gestured toward Duffy Plaza. “What do we got here?”

  “We got us a friggin’ mess, is what we got. I’m talkin’ about the turf battle. FBI wants the scene. JTTF’s here, along with agents from the Field Intelligence Group and something called the foreign counterintelligence squad. Never knew you guys had a foreign counterintelligence squad.”