Stalin's Final Sting

by Andrew Turpin

  This side of the building was windowless and had obviously been originally joined to another building, now long demolished.

  There was no way out of the apartments there. Any exit would have to be at the Furman Street side via the door or fire escapes or windows or, alternatively, via the rear, which Johnson hadn’t yet seen.

  He turned his attention away from the building and looked ahead down Everit Street. Then he noticed a tall, white-haired figure, maybe eighty yards ahead, walking away from him on the far side of the junction with Doughty Street. The man had a slight limp.

  Johnson stopped dead. Shit, that’s Watson.

  Johnson grabbed his phone from his pocket and, accelerating toward Watson, called Dover. The call was answered within two rings.

  “I can see Watson,” Johnson said without preamble. “He’s heading south down Everit Street. Must have gotten out the back of the building or something.”

  “Right, I’ve got a man farther down there,” Dover said. “Will alert him. My team’s in the apartment building now, getting the right door number from the doorman. Thanks.”

  But even before he had ended the call, Johnson saw Watson cross the street ahead of him and, with surprising speed, vault over a waist-high fence that appeared to border a park full of bushes and trees.

  Monday, June 10, 2013

  Brooklyn, New York

  His head down, Watson strode up a gentle hill to Vine Street, only to see another black 4x4, similar to the one on Furman Street, parked fifty yards ahead of him, farther up the hill. Nobody was visible next to or in it, but Watson decided against getting any nearer.

  The negative feeling, the instinctive prickle at the back of his neck, felt stronger than it had when he had scanned the area outside 8 Old Fulton Street. Now he needed to get off the street.

  Watson crossed Vine and walked up to a waist-high black chain-link fence that separated the sidewalk from a public park. A sign nearby read Hillside Park. He swung his left leg across the fence and climbed over.

  He glanced toward the 4x4 and saw a man emerge from the back door and begin running down the sidewalk in his direction.

  Sonofabitch.

  Unlike many of his former Agency colleagues, Watson had made a real effort to stay as fit as possible, despite his advancing years. He visited a gym in São Paulo at least a couple of times a week, was lean and, apart from the ever-present twinge in his right knee, remained in decent condition.

  Now he broke into a jog across the parkland, heading parallel to Vine Street twenty yards to his left, the snap and crackle of breaking twigs beneath his feet sounding like mini gunshots.

  It didn’t take long before he realized the man who had emerged from the 4x4 had also entered the park and was in pursuit, making a similar racket as he passed beneath the trees.

  Watson skirted around another couple of low-hanging trees, ducking at the last moment to avoid a branch that loomed up at him. He headed toward the northwest corner of the park, where he knew, having checked out the area a couple of days earlier, that there was a pedestrian gate that led back onto Vine Street, only forty yards or so from his car.

  But the rising noise behind him told him that his pursuer was gaining ground rapidly. There was no way he was going to outrun a guy who was probably at least thirty years his junior.

  Watson reached into his pocket as he ran and removed one of the two pepper sprays, flicking off the safety catch with his index finger.

  As soon as the man drew close enough for Watson to hear his breathing, he turned and pressed hard on the pepper spray’s trigger button, squirting it hard into the man’s face.

  Monday, June 10, 2013

  Brooklyn, New York

  After ending his call with Dover, Johnson broke into a run up the hill toward the point where he had seen Watson disappear. He grabbed his cap, which was threatening to come off in the breeze, and stuffed it into his back pocket.

  Ahead of him, he saw another man sprint along the sidewalk from the opposite direction and also vault over the fence into the park in pursuit.

  That must be one of Dover’s men, he thought.

  By the time Johnson arrived at the corner of the park, the two men had vanished behind trees and bushes. He paused and listened. He could hear the sound of footsteps and snapping twigs and then caught a few glimpses of them, now well ahead of him. He realized they were running through the trees parallel to Vine Street.

  The FBI man would doubtless catch Watson easily. Instead of entering the park, then, Johnson set off down Vine Street. Maybe he could join in for the coup de grâce.

  Johnson had gone about twenty yards when he heard a low-pitched male yelp, followed a few seconds later by another one, and then a squeal of metal on metal that sounded like a gate opening.

  At the far end of the park, Johnson saw a dark figure topped by a white mop of hair emerge through a gate onto the street and begin running away from him.

  Johnson didn’t stop to think how Watson had managed to thwart a trained FBI pursuer, but he broke into a sprint down the sidewalk after him.

  Watson crossed the street to the same side as Johnson, albeit some distance ahead, and continued to the corner, where he turned left, out of Johnson’s sight.

  Ahead of him at the end of Vine Street, high above the ground, Johnson could see a stream of vehicles flashing over the elevated section of the interstate.

  Where the hell has Watson gone now? Where’s the damned FBI?

  Johnson turned at the corner of Vine Street and McKenny Street and stopped. Behind him was the expressway and an entrance ramp, also elevated. Watson was nowhere in sight. Neither was the FBI.

  Suddenly there was the sound of an engine starting, and with an extended squeal of tires, a dark-colored Volkswagen Golf flew out of a parking spot across the other side of McKenny Street. It shot toward the junction where Johnson was standing, its rear end swaying, so rapid was its acceleration.

  At the wheel was a man with a white mop of hair, wearing glasses, staring straight at Johnson. For a fraction of a second, their eyes met through the windshield. But it was enough—Johnson knew without a shadow of doubt it was his former boss.

  Watson completely ignored the stop sign at the end of McKenny Street, right next to where Johnson stood, and without braking, sped into the street beyond.

  Johnson, working on instinct, pulled the Beretta from his belt, but even before he could flick off the safety, he realized there was little he could do. Quite apart from not having a license to carry the gun, blasting away at a fleeing vehicle could put him in deep trouble.

  Instead, he made a mental note of the license plate, realizing as he did so that the street behind him, onto which Watson had driven, formed the on-ramp onto the expressway.

  Then the car was around the corner and gone.

  There was no time to even curse. Johnson grabbed his phone from his pocket and tapped on Dover’s number.

  “Watson’s just got away onto the interstate, southbound,” Johnson said. “He’s in a VW Golf, gray or charcoal.” He gave Dover the plate number.

  “Can you get one of your drivers after him?” Johnson said. “I’d like to go too.”

  “Okay,” Dover said. “I’ve got a man on Old Fulton. I’ll tell him to pick you up at that Vine Street intersection with the on-ramp. You’ll need to be lightning quick getting into the vehicle.”

  “Affirmative,” Johnson replied. “I think your man chasing Watson in the park went down. I saw him go into the park but not out of it again.”

  There was a slight pause. “I’ll check on that,” Dover said. He ended the call.

  Thirty seconds later the high-pitched whine of a powerful engine being thrashed in low gear echoed across McKenny Street as an unmarked black Chevrolet Suburban SUV shot around the corner from Old Fulton Street. It screeched to a halt at the stop sign, and the driver indicated to Johnson to get into the rear seat.

  He climbed in and slammed the door and the driver, a younger man with short s
piky blond hair, took off, the sharp acceleration throwing Johnson into the seat back. He recovered, fastened his seat belt, and stared forward.

  “Golf, I was told,” the driver said, focusing intently on the road. “My name’s Dave, by the way.”

  “Yes, a dark gray Golf. He’s got at least two minutes’ start on us, though. I’m Joe.”

  “Hit the lights, buddy,” Dave said to the agent sitting next to him in the front passenger seat, who was bald with a close-cropped semicircle of dark hair.

  The man flicked a switch on the dash, turning on the concealed emergency lights and the siren, which began to wail loudly. Then he turned around, nodded to Johnson, and introduced himself as Ben.

  Both men were dressed casually, Dave in a navy blue polo shirt and black chinos, Ben in a dark green T-shirt and blue jeans.

  Dave floored the accelerator as the Suburban came off the on-ramp and onto the expressway proper at the Cadman Plaza West entrance, then was immediately forced to brake as he navigated into a busy flow of traffic. He glanced into his rearview mirror.

  “Got Pete coming up behind too,” Dave said.

  Johnson looked over his shoulder to see a black Ford Interceptor sedan about forty yards behind. Here the interstate was built in a double-deck configuration, with the traffic heading south and westbound on the bottom and the north and eastbound lanes on the top. The concrete expanse that formed the top deck was now stretched out above the Suburban like a canopy.

  “The boss said you know this guy Watson well,” Dave said. “That right?”

  “You could say that,” Johnson said. “He was a CIA lifer until he got caught.” Johnson proceeded to briefly give them some of the background on Watson’s illegal dealings.

  The car radio crackled into life with a click and a hiss. It was Dover to say that an unmarked New York Police Department car was about a mile and a half farther south down 278, approaching exit twenty-six, and had slowed to a crawl.

  “That’s only two exits south of where you got on,” Dover said. “The NYPD crew are hoping to get an eye on Watson’s Golf. He’ll be heading down there, no doubt about it. If they get the eye, you’ll be first to know because you’ll probably be there next. I’m getting two choppers airborne, and we’ve got two more cars coming on at twenty-six and twenty-five, in case they’re needed. By the way, Malcolm got pepper-sprayed in the park—Watson hit him right in the eyes. That’s why the son of a bitch got away.” There was another crackle and Dover was gone.

  The Suburban came up behind a truck, cut sharply left into the next lane in front of a silver Chevy, and then moved left again into the outside lane, where Dave briefly accelerated until he reached a huge RV, which belatedly moved over to allow them past.

  The traffic was heavy, but at least with the lights and siren on, vehicles were making way for them. That would give them an advantage over the Golf.

  With any luck, the net was closing on Watson.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Monday, June 10, 2013

  Brooklyn, New York

  “Always do what the opposition least expects,” Watson muttered to himself. It was a mantra he had drummed into countless subordinates at the CIA over the decades. As he piloted the VW Golf onto westbound Interstate 278, he decisively abandoned his original plan to head south via the New Jersey Turnpike.

  It would have worked if it hadn’t been for Joe Johnson spotting him as he pulled out of his parking spot on McKenny Street. At least, he was 95 percent certain Johnson had seen him. He had definitely been standing on the corner as Watson roared past him onto the on-ramp for the BQE. Their eyes had met. There was, of course, a chance that Johnson wouldn’t have recognized him, but Watson wasn’t going to take that gamble.

  All his instincts in the past twenty minutes had proved correct, and he wasn’t going against them now.

  If he had been recognized, then it was an absolute certainty that within ten minutes, the interstate would be crawling with pursuit vehicles manned by federal and local law enforcement officers, and there would be choppers filming his every maneuver until he was brought to the inevitable, crunching halt, probably somewhere around Staten Island.

  Eight guns pointed at his head, special agents swearing at him at full volume, his hands in the air, cuffs snapping on. No, Watson wasn’t going down in that fashion.

  As the expressway curved around to the left, the giant cranes, piers, moored cruise ships, warehouses, and expanse of waiting trucks at the Brooklyn Port Authority terminals at the mouth of the East River came into view to his right. Governors Island was visible just beyond. The sign for exit twenty-seven read Atlantic Avenue, and Watson headed straight down the off-ramp.

  At the bottom, he took another right, doubling back on himself, and at the intersection with Atlantic Avenue, he hesitated for a moment. Now he was less than a mile south of where he had started, near the southern end of Furman Street.

  What would they least expect me to do?

  Watson decided on the subway, but first he needed to dump the Golf as quickly as possible and get it well out of sight.

  He took a left, then a right onto Bridge Park Drive. Ahead of him was a Quik Park garage beneath the vast concrete and glass condominium tower at One Brooklyn Bridge Park. Watson drove the Golf straight into the parking garage and to his relief found a space almost immediately.

  The chances of the police quickly finding his rental car here were low, he figured.

  He grabbed a blue Washington Nationals baseball cap from the rear seat, jammed it on his head, and made his way out of the garage. He checked his watch. It was a quarter to seven. From there he strode along the street to a bus stop on the edge of Pier Six, which formed the southern end of Brooklyn Bridge Park.

  From here, he could jump on a bus that would whisk him along Atlantic Avenue to the Barclays Center subway station in probably seven or eight minutes. In fact, he could see a number sixty-three bus approaching just a few hundred yards away.

  And from the Atlantic Avenue–Barclays Center station, he could take a train into the ether of Manhattan Island and just disappear in any number of different directions. That was something he was very good at.

  Monday, June 10, 2013

  Brooklyn, New York

  The black FBI Suburban navigated through the traffic bunched up near exit twenty-seven and continued south.

  Once again the radio crackled into life with a squelch break, then Dover came back on, his tone now a note or two higher than it had been before. “Good news and bad. We’ve got Donnerstein and Zilleman in cuffs, but the NYPD patrol at exit twenty-six haven’t seen Watson.”

  “Not seen him?” Dave said, turning his head momentarily toward Johnson.

  “No. There’s been no gray Golf heading past twenty-six,” Dover said.

  “We’re nearly at twenty-six now and we haven’t seen him either,” Dave said. “What the hell?”

  Johnson grimaced. “He must have got there. Unless—”

  “Unless he came straight off at twenty-seven. Doesn’t make sense but . . .”

  “It does make sense,” Johnson said. “He must have seen me and knew I’d seen him. He’d probably realize I had time to see the plate. Then he would know that the game was up if he stayed with the Golf.”

  Johnson paused for a second, then added with a note of certainty in his voice, “He’s going to dump the Golf.”

  “Where?” Dover asked.

  “Don’t know,” Johnson said. “I think he’d want to put it out of sight, though, off the street. A parking garage or something. I’m guessing he’ll take a bus or the subway instead. Or find another car somehow. Even steal one.”

  There was silence for two seconds. Then Dover spoke again. “I’ll tell the NYPD to shut down the subway and bus routes. You guys know any obvious parking garages near twenty-seven?”

  “I took my kids to the park at Pier Six a couple of months ago,” Ben said from the front seat. “There’s a big garage right there, underground, beneath a
n apartment building. Forget what it’s called, though.”

  “We’ll find it,” Dover said. “Any others?”

  “Can’t think of any,” Ben said. “But he could just dump it on a side street. Doesn’t have to be a garage.”

  “Yes, true. But he might prefer it to be out of sight, like Joe says,” Dover said. “Exit twenty-seven sounds like the favorite. I’ll get NYPD to Court Street and Borough Hall subways. You guys come off at exit twenty-six, and I’ll work out which stations you need to head to. Okay?”

  “Okay, boss,” Dave said.

  Dover ended the call just as Dave braked hard. The traffic remained heavy, and all three lanes were moving at no more than forty. He swung the Suburban over from the outside lane to the inside and then cut onto the off-ramp for exit twenty-six, his siren still blaring and lights flashing.

  “What buses go from that parking garage?” Johnson asked Ben.

  “There’s only one,” Ben said from the front. “I know because I checked it all out when we visited. It’s the sixty-three, which we used.”

  “Where does it go to?” Johnson asked.

  “Along Atlantic Avenue to the Atlantic Avenue subway, then south past Union Street subway toward Fort Hamilton. He could get on the Long Island Railroad at Atlantic Avenue too.”

  Johnson tilted his head back and tried to put himself in his old boss’s shoes. What would Watson do? He’d probably try to be unpredictable, that was for certain. It was his MO. So rather than running away from Manhattan, he might go back into it, using the lines from Atlantic Avenue and Union Street subways. The two big airports, JFK and LaGuardia, were too obvious and risky for Watson. But he might try to use one of the smaller ones.

  “Call Dover back,” Johnson said. “If there’s still no sign of Watson farther down the interstate, he’s definitely exited. My feeling is he’ll get into Manhattan and then to one of the minor airports. He’s done that before. And tell Dover we’ll go to Union Street and Atlantic Avenue now. If they draw a blank, then we’ll go to the other subways near exit twenty-seven after that.”