Reardon thought for a moment longer. “That’s about it, really. I spoke with a representative of Halberstom’s extended family. They’re still in shock. The funeral is this weekend at Mount Zion in Queens. Of course, there has still been no sign of Halberstom’s wife and children.”
“No witnesses at all in Halberstom’s case?” Rose asked. “Any evidence in the apartment?”
“No witnesses yet. I’m still working on canvassing the immediate neighborhood. Still trying to get in touch with some of the residents that live nearby. There is no evidence in the apartment thus far. None. There doesn’t appear to have been any sort of struggle. When the NYPD first entered the home, it appeared a normal evening was in progress: there was a pan of noodles still cooking on the stove, a couple of children’s games lying on the kitchen table with two glasses still half filled with chocolate milk. The television set was on in the living room with a movie still in the DVD player. I believe the vehicle or vehicles used in the abduction were kept idling in a small alleyway next to the east exit out of Halberstom’s apartment. There was a row of trees and hedges there preventing anyone from getting a good view from the street. There weren’t many people out and about anyway because it was cold and just beginning to snow. Hopefully something will turn up shortly.”
“And how about Patrice Clemente and Sam Than?”
Rose picked up the file he had on Clemente to glance again at a photograph. He knew from studying her file that Clemente was born and raised in Santiago, Chile. She was the daughter of a Chilean diplomat. She’d attended a Catholic high school in Santiago before earning a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Chile. She did so well at university and in the standardized testing that she won admission to the University of Texas, where she completed her doctorate. She went on to do some post-doctoral work at a lab in Chicago before being hired as a research scientist at Brooklyn Venture Capital. Included in the file were a series of recently acquired photos from her family. She was five feet seven inches tall with a slim frame and dark, wavy hair. She loved the outdoors and had taken frequent trips to hike and ski in the Andes mountain range to the east of Santiago.
“Me and Benny have been working both of them,” Reardon said.
“Start with Clemente.”
Reardon nodded. “Clemente’s abduction is the only one of the five that didn’t happen in New York City,” Reardon said. “She went hiking in the Catskills on Saturday, January twenty-first and hasn’t been seen since. She was reported missing on the following Monday evening by one of her friends, Cynthia Reyes, who is also a colleague. Reyes called the NYPD after Clemente failed to show up for work that day and she was unable to contact her that night. Clemente is single, but she did send an email to Reyes before she left for the Catskills, letting her know where she was going and when to expect her back. Cardenas and I drove down there last week. Found her car, a 2010 Hyundai Santa Fe, parked at a rest stop along state highway seventeen. No trace of her after she set out into the mountain. No witnesses. Nothing.”
Reardon paused in case anyone had questions. There were none, so he continued. “Clemente made her routes known, particularly to Ms. Reyes, so we were able to re-trace the route she took on the twenty-first. According to Reyes, there was one route, a portion of the Shawangunk Ridge Trail, she was partial to. We re-traced a portion of it to see if there was anybody along the route who may have seen or heard anything. As Milt implied, we had no success. Her car was in order, nothing inside or outside of the vehicle to suggest anything out of the ordinary.
“One thing we have noted,” Reardon said, “is the remote nature of the locales where both Clemente and Jonas Craig were taken. Craig was taken in a back alley in south Brooklyn where there are very few people. Craig’s sister told me he frequently uses that back alley stretch in his run as a shortcut. If we look at both Craig and Clemente and how these abductions occurred, it suggests strongly that their abductors had spent time surveying them, coming to a thorough understanding of their lives and the specific routes they frequented. They would’ve had to have had this knowledge beforehand in order to execute these abductions as well as they did with, it seems, no witnesses.”
“What can you tell us about Dr. Than?” Rose asked.
“Dr. Than is another scientist working within Project Magus for Brooklyn Venture Capital,” Cardenas said. “He was born and raised in San Francisco. Earned his doctorate at Cal Berkeley in the late nineties. He has a wife and two kids—a boy and a girl. He teaches a general physics course at Bronx Community College on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. It’s part of the CUNY system. He typically parks his car along West 180th Street on the southwest corner of campus. We believe Than was probably taken in the small parking area along the street as it’s fairly isolated there at that time of day. We spoke with a couple of his teaching colleagues, and they both said he normally walks straight from Polowczyk Hall, where he teaches, to his car. His class doesn’t end until nine thirty or ten and, on the night he was abducted, he’d stayed at his office in the science building a little later than usual grading some exam papers. We’ve been hunting for witnesses again with no luck at this point. It would probably help if we could make some sort of public request for witnesses.”
Rose inhaled and exhaled slowly. “I agree. I’ll run it by Lorren. This case is sensitive, but I’ll see what I can do.” Rose paused for a moment before turning to Mathiason. “And last but not least, what have you got on Dunne?”
Mathiason cleared his throat. “The examiner found a bullet lodged in Dunne’s torso. It’s a standard 7.62x39 and it was fired from a Kalashnikov rifle, an AK47. Looks like the bullet was fired from an elevated position. I’m pretty sure of this due to the location of the entry wound as compared to where it was found within Dunne’s body, and from witness accounts at the time of the shooting. I found a boy and girl who live in an apartment adjacent to the clearing where Dunne was shot. They said they saw an Asian man carrying a case of some kind inside the apartment, near their family’s room, around the time of the shooting. It was a younger male. They didn’t get a good look at his face, though. Said he was wearing a hat, a baseball cap. I certainly think the case could’ve been used to carry a rifle. Their family’s apartment is elevated, up on the fifth floor. I’ve spoken with many, but not all, of the tenants who live on the top couple of floors. Nobody knows anything or, at least, nobody’s willing to come forward. There is roof access to the building, both from within the building itself and from the two adjacent ones. I believe the shooter, or shooters, did their work from up there. Haven’t been able to find anything on the roof. At least, not yet. That’s everything I have at this time.”
Reardon said, “There were two bullets. One of them lodged in his torso. No sign of the second bullet? The one that struck him in his leg?”
“None. I’ve made an attempt, but there’s just no way of knowing for sure where it may have ricocheted off to after it struck Dunne. I’m still trying, but I’m not hopeful that it will ever be found.”
The room fell into silence again for a moment before it was broken by a deep voice.
“Any news from the surveillance efforts on the other scientists or overseas?”
Rose turned toward the source of the question: Pernetta Walker. She’d remained quiet since her update on Honeycutt.
“Nothing of any note to this point, Pernetta. The chatter we’ve been getting from our source overseas has quieted a bit since the most recent abduction—Clemente’s abduction. As you all know, it’s been a few days since then. We have all of our resources in place, ready and waiting. So we’re hoping something will turn up sooner rather than later.”
“Can you tell us anything more on this man, Phua Youhong, who Xiang met with before Patrick Dunne was shot?” Walker asked.
“He’s an assistant to one of the ambassadors in the Chinese embassy here in New York. We don’t know much about him. He was educated, in part, at one of the universities in Shanghai and then earned a master�
�s degree at NYU. He’s been in the U.S. since 2004, the year he started coursework at NYU. At the time, he was in the U.S. on a student visa. He went back to Shanghai for a couple years, from 2006 to 2009, until he moved back to New York when he started his work in the embassy. We know next to nothing about how he spent his time back in China. We are trying to inquire through formal diplomatic channels but, to be honest, we don’t expect any sort of reliable response. We are also pursuing him with proprietary sources in China. These efforts are ongoing.”
“Is Phua responsible for Dunne’s murder?” Pernetta Walker asked.
Mathiason spoke up. “From the witnesses, it appears that Phua lured Dunne to the location where he was shot, but he didn’t pull the trigger. I was able to track down two witnesses to the shooting. Both witnesses have said that the shots came from two shooters, probably located on the roof or in one of the rooms on the uppermost floor. There were, apparently, four shots. Whoever the shooters were, they were elevated. I believe it most likely the shooters were both on the roof, but I haven’t ruled out that two of the shots could’ve come from inside an apartment.”
Walker shook her head. “We’re batting zero for everything in this case. Been a while since I worked a case with so few leads.”
The room fell silent for a moment before Walker spoke up again. “Do we have surveillance on Phua Youhong?”
“Absolutely,” Rose said. “We have Agent Jonathan Wong leading the surveillance on him.”
“Johnny Wong?”
“Yeah, Johnny’s his nickname.”
A laconic grin spread across Walker’s face. “I’ve met Johnny. Love that guy.”
“He’ll do a good job with Phua,” Rose said. “You’re right though, Pernetta. We have virtually no leads on any of these abductions. In my opinion, this means that Lyn Lee’s role is more important than ever.”
Rose turned toward Jillian Frank. “How’s Ms. Lee doing?”
“So far, so good,” Frank said. “She’s been a willing participant. I’ve been sensing some reticence as of late, however. I’m not sure how much longer she’s going to be willing to string this along.”
“What do you mean when you say reticence?”
“I think she’s starting to realize that there could be a messy ending to this whole situation. I think she might be getting nervous about her relationship with Xiang. She hasn’t yet mentioned it specifically, but I think she’s unsure how she’ll handle an escalation in the relationship, particularly with respect to physical intimacy.”
Rose took an extended breath. “We need Ms. Lee’s contribution. Lorren and myself—” He paused momentarily. “We both believe Xiang is part of this. We need to do everything possible to make sure Lee stays engaged with Xiang as long as possible.” Rose looked directly at Frank, holding her gaze for effect. “I need you to do everything possible to keep her in her role with Xiang, understand?”
Frank looked apprehensively at Cardenas, then back to Rose. “Okay. Will do.”
“Thank you, Agent Frank.”
Rose stood now, looking down on the other agents.
“Agent Reardon—”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you accompany Jillian to her next meeting with Ms. Lee and reinforce how important her role is to us in this investigation?”
“Certainly.”
“Thank you.”
Rose ended the meeting and watched them file out of the room. His last thought before exiting the room himself was the hope that, as time wore on, the dependence on Lee would diminish with the finding of new leads in the case. His gut was telling him, however, that because of the professionalism with which the abductions seemed to have been carried out, the chances of this happening were slim.
Chapter 17
New York City
Wednesday, February 4, 10:16 p.m. EST
The hardest part of working counter-surveillance, Johnny Wong thought, was learning how to blend in to the background. Blending in was something Wong had never been good at. He’d been adopted into a white middle-class family in Chicago, the son of a police officer and a teacher, and attended a mostly white Lutheran high school in Chicago before attending New York University on a wrestling scholarship. He’d worked as an officer for the NYPD for three years before joining the FBI as one of only six agents of Chinese descent in his graduating class from the FBI Academy. He could scarcely remember a time throughout the whole of his life when he’d felt entirely as though he belonged, the closest probably being during his time at NYU.
Still, Wong was doing his best to play the part of disinterested traveler. The more conspicuous items included a pair of faded black jeans, black leather hiking shoes, and a black lamb-skin winter coat over a white button-down that he kept untucked, and a pair of black winter gloves. On his head he wore a gray wool newsboy cap. Items of the more inconspicuous variety included a microphone that he’d latched onto his coat and a pair of small earphones to communicate with his FBI colleague, Kurt Jones.
Their current subject was a Chinese citizen by the name of Phua Youhong, an enigmatic employee for the Chinese government in the Chinese embassy in New York. The FBI knew he was a citizen of China and had lived in Shanghai for some period of time. They knew he’d attended college at YU, where he’d earned a master’s degree in government and politics. They most certainly knew he lived alone in a tiny apartment in Midtown and they’d discovered he was dating a Chinese woman who worked for a Wall Street firm. They knew he was the last person to see former agent Patrick Dunne alive before he’d been shot dead in Chinatown. And that was about it, although Wong did know he’d stepped into a small coffee shop called the Coffee Bean in Midtown at 7th Avenue and West 35th about four minutes ago and counting.
To this point, they’d followed him all the way south from his apartment on 47th Street, which he’d exited earlier in the evening at a quarter after nine.
Wong checked his watch. 10:17 p.m. Phua had been in the coffee shop for over half an hour, and Wong was getting restless.
Jones’s voice crackled into his earphones. “Jeezus, I’m freezing. It’s beyond time for Phua to be on his way. How long has it been now, forty-five minutes?”
“Forty-seven,” Wong said. It was cold. He started to pace back and forth along 47th Street again, trying to keep moving and keep himself warm.
Jones was covering a back alley in case Phua decided to leave through a rear exit.
“I need to find a new line of work,” Jones said. “At least you can people watch. Aren’t many people over here.”
“I’ll take the alley next time,” Wong offered. “Hold on, he’s leaving now. He’s heading south on 7th Avenue.” Wong followed Phua, staying a good block or so behind. Phua, for as short and thin as he was, walked at a brisk pace. At least it wouldn’t be an issue keeping warm anymore. Wong followed him south down 7th Avenue, dodging northbound pedestrian traffic as needed. This went on for several minutes until Phua made a left turn at 17th Street and then turned south again on 6th Avenue.
Phua made another left turn two blocks later off of 6th Avenue onto 12th Street. A few blocks later, Wong followed Phua through the street-level entrance of a high-rise, through a pair of massive black-tinted glass doors. He’d entered into a court area bustling with people dressed in formal attire. In fact, there was a stream of people in suits and ties and dresses entering into the court through a door on the north side. Where was Phua?
Wong searched through the crowd, his line of sight hopping around the room. He finally spotted a thin man with short black hair in a suit who he thought may be Phua, but he couldn’t be certain. He pushed forward, easing into a jog. Appearing suddenly off to his right was Jones, who’d entered into the court from the adjacent side of the building.
Wong said, “I see you, Jones. Do you see Phua anywhere?”
Wong could see Jones standing in the main corridor on the other side of the court, his phone pressed against his ear.
“No, nowhere,” Jones said. “Where are
you?”
“Just entered the courtyard through the west entrance.”
Wong saw Jones turn toward him.
“I see you,” Jones said.
Wong said, “I think he’s passed you down into the main corridor. He couldn’t have gone far.”
Jones had turned away from him, surveying the main corridor to the east. “I think I see him. He’s still eastbound, but moving pretty quickly.”
Jones had started into a trot toward Phua. Wong followed as quickly as he could, evading the throng of men and women making their way around the court. A hundred and fifty feet into the corridor, after having passed out of the original building and into another, Wong was closing in on Jones when Jones buzzed him on the phone. Jones was looking at something to his right and elevated.
“I think he went up the escalator. There’s an overpass up there, over the adjacent street. Can you get a look at it? I think Phua’s gonna cross over.”
Wong stopped at a large window about thirty feet short of the small courtyard ahead and peered through. He could see the overpass extending off to the adjacent building across the street, but the angle wasn’t good. No way he’d be able to get a decent look at Phua.
“Negative,” Wong said. “It’s too bad of an angle.”
Wong proceeded toward Jones, who’d leapt onto the escalator. He watched Jones ascend up and out of his view. He sprinted forward until he got to the escalator and then began sprinting up it. After summiting, he dodged more groups of people as he plowed forward over the overpass and then bounded down a set of stairs on the opposite side. There, he found Jones standing in another small courtyard, searching in a three hundred sixty-degree circle.
“I have no idea where he went.”
Wong nodded. “He must’ve really sped up after he entered the high-rise. We’ll have to pick him up some other time.”
Chapter 18
Beijing, China
The Thought Cathedral Page 21
