As the small general exited the black limo, his silver and gold medals glinting in the bright winter sun, Cristos lined up his gun sight, the cross hairs bisecting the diminutive man’s buzz-cut head. He adjusted for the three-mph cross wind and the dry winter air. He wrapped his fingers around the trigger as he had so many times before, fully exhaled, long and slow, purging his body and mind, tuning his focus. He took a half-breath, held it. And finally pulled the trigger.
Cristos rolled over into a crouch behind the parapet wall and out of sight of the world. He quickly broke down the rifle as he moved, and he had it stowed by the time he arrived at the bulkhead door.
He stripped off the blue jumper to reveal a charcoal-gray pinstriped suit, custom-tailored over a powerful body. He looked every part the nouveau-riche Wall Street banker, with his blue iridescent tie, polished cap-toe shoes, and perfect ponytail, as he walked down the stairs to the thirty-third floor and entered apartment 33A.
The apartment belonged to Naveed and Jasmine Bonsley, a society couple who had emigrated from India forty years earlier and had amassed a fortune from thirteen pharmaceutical patents they held. Their four-million-dollar apartment had nine rooms with a view of the East River and a southerly view of Lower Manhattan.
The Bonsleys were in bed in the other room and had been all morning. They had been out the night before, arriving home after midnight to find Cristos sitting in a club chair and staring out the window.
Confused and impaired by too much champagne, Naveed questioned the man as his wife reached for the phone, but her fingers never made their way to the dial. With primal speed, Cristos burst out of the chair, his hand snapping out, grabbing her thin neck and lifting her six inches off the floor. Naveed stood there in panic as Jasmine’s frail legs uselessly kicked the air, her hands wrapping around her assailant’s as she struggled to breathe.
Cristos carried the fifty-five-year-old woman through the living room, past the dining room, to the master bedroom, flinging her about like a rag doll. He finally gripped her shoulder with his other hand and in a single move snapped her neck. He flung her to the bed, where her limbs splayed out as her dead eyes stared off.
Naveed ran to her side, clutching her, screaming her name as tears flooded his face. He turned to see Cristos above him and didn’t flinch, didn’t move-he just wanted it to end, to be reunited with his dead wife.
With the morning sun pouring in, Cristos looked out the living-room window to the south toward the entrance to the UN, where police had swarmed the area and cordoned off First Avenue. He knew the drilclass="underline" they would fan out in hopes of finding the killer but knew he was probably long gone, lost in the city of eight million plus, never suspecting that he was five hundred yards away, looking down on them with the confidence of accomplishment and continued freedom.
Cristos stepped into the elevator, hitting the button for the ground floor. As the polished brass doors closed, he stared at his reflection, adjusting the small knot of his tie. His face was pure, unblemished, a facade to the world in so many ways.
His private charter was scheduled to leave the Westchester airport upon his arrival, and with the half-hour drive, he estimated wheels up for 11:15. The six-hour transatlantic flight would put him back home before midnight local time. He was exacting in all areas of life, planning, timing, playing out every scenario in his mind before engaging in any task, be it the purchase of a new Bugatti, making personal investments, or committing murder. While he had used the rifle that day-leaving it on the bed between the Bonsleys’ cold bodies to taunt and confuse the authorities-he had engaged in all manners of dispensing death: poisons, accidents, knives slipped between the ribs of unsuspecting marks. There were assassinations of subterfuge and grandeur: politicians dying of heart attacks in the throes of illicit passion; crime figures sitting in Parisian cafes torn asunder by horrific explosions of world-headline proportions; prime ministers’ wives trapped in their cars as they tumbled down mountainsides.
And all the while, there was never a single piece of evidence tying back to Cristos. Credit was never taken, responsibility never assigned. His disparate methods never allowed the connecting of any dots. Too often, in so many jobs, pride was the greatest enemy. When credit was taken, egos were inflated, dulling the mind, softening drive.
The feeling of invincibility flowed in with such delusions of grandeur, and while they might not prove life-threatening to an ad exec, it was deadly to someone like Cristos.
When he arrived last night, slipping past the sleeping concierge, he stepped into the elevator, confident that his image wouldn’t be picked up by the security camera. The small device in his pocket emitted a magnetic pulse that interfered with the circuitry of the camera. It was of Israeli design, the Mosad having developed it to help them hide under a cloak of invisibility. Now, as he rode toward the lobby, he dug his hand into his pocket, running it over the small matchbook-sized device.
But all of the planning and preparation in the world cannot eliminate pure chance. Sometimes the wheels of fate turn in different ways. And in such a manner, the bearings on the counterweight cable of the elevator wore out with a belabored squeal, fusing themselves under the grinding pressure, bringing the cab that Cristos was riding in to a halt.
At the same time, a tall, matronly woman named Charlotte Newman arrived at the concierge desk, flowers in hand and a small elegant gift box under her arm. She was there to surprise her friend Jasmine Bonsley for her birthday and to whisk her off to a surprise-filled day of massages, facials, and lunch.
The cab was out of service for all of two minutes when the maintenance staff entered the shaftway one floor above the crippled elevator to make sure that none of their elderly tenants was in the car. With no video feed, no one was going to take the chance of some senior having a claustrophobic panic attack because of faulty security equipment.
But when they pried open the sixteenth-floor door and peered down the shaft onto the car ten feet below, they saw the impeccably dressed man climbing up through the emergency hatch, a man none of them recognized, a man who was now trapped with nowhere to go in the thirty-five-story shaftway.
With the sudden radio call about the horror found inside apartment 33A by Charlotte Newman happening in conjunction with the mayhem out in front of the UN, you didn’t need a detective to put the pieces together.
The headlines screamed of the arrest of Nowaji Cristos, the murderer of the head of state of Pashir and the executioner of a wealthy couple in their bed. The New York City police were praised by all for apprehending the criminal so quickly. But as he was arrested, no one had any real idea who they had in custody or the atrocities he had committed the world over.
And so the man who had remained invisible to mankind, who killed without witness, who walked the world like a ghost, was brought down by the failure of a handful of twenty-cent ball bearings and an overeager best friend.
Twelve hours later, under cover of darkness, a four-boat flotilla headed out to Trudeau Island. The boats were driven without running lights, their captains aided by infra-red goggles as they peered through the cold night.
Jack rode out with Peter Womack, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District. He knew him well; following parallel ascending career paths, they had worked together on several cases, even sharing dinner, with their wives, on occasion. While many complained about friction between the state and federal levels, none of that existed between Peter and Jack.