Katazin said, “Is this the crowd you expected?”
Lenny said, “It’s about what I thought.” His dark eyes darted around the area, focusing for a moment on a uniformed police officer across the street.
That made Katazin a little nervous, and he scanned the courtyard to make sure no one was close. There was one man on the far side of the courtyard walking up to a bench. No one else moved. Then Katazin focused his full attention on Lenny and said, “Who’s your friend?”
“This is Alice. She’s my girlfriend. She’s also a witness in case you go nuts.” He held up his hands in a defensive movement and said quickly, “You have to admit you sounded a little unglued on the phone. I didn’t know what would happen in person.”
Katazin stared at the rail-thin young woman. She had a wide array of tattoos herself and light brown eyes that made her look like a deer eyeing a wolf. Her hair was frizzy and popped out at odd angles from under a wool hat with the Stand Up to Wall Street logo across the front.
Katazin decided he didn’t have time for this and got right to the point. He looked at Lenny and said, “Are the protesters really just scared? Or are they lazy?”
Lenny shrugged and said, “Little bit of both. I worked with the people who showed up. But who shows up in the middle of the day during the week? Mostly unemployed and homeless people. They lost interest, and so has the media.”
Katazin had noticed only one TV crew, stationed in a truck at the far end of the courtyard, and they weren’t even filming at the moment.
He said, “What will it take to get the protests started again?”
Lenny smiled and said, “Money. Money to advertise on Facebook and other social media and to cover my time and talent.”
Katazin recognized this wasn’t an off-the-cuff answer. He had been waiting to spring this for some time. Finally Katazin asked, “How much?”
“Fifty grand.”
The little anarchist-for-profit had answered much too quickly. This was part of a plot to extort money and nothing more. Katazin gave him a flat stare but didn’t answer.
After twenty seconds of silence, Katazin said, “That sounds awfully steep.”
“It’s nothing compared to what the rich dude, what’s his name?” He paused, then answered his own question. “George Soros. What he paid for the protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. He gave them millions to keep up the protests. And that turned out to be a fake issue. All I want is a measly fifty K.”
In the ensuing silence Lenny blurted out, “It’ll also keep me quiet.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know exactly, but there’s a reason you want the protests. And I bet you don’t want the cops to know. Let’s call it fifty grand either way.”
Anger flashed through Katazin as he calmly gripped the handle of the pistol he had in the pocket of his windbreaker. He looked around and realized too many people were close by, but it was awfully tempting. If only he had a knife on him this conversation would be over. He needed a few moments to think.
22
Vladimir Putin sat at his official desk in his office at the palace at Novo-Ogaryovo. He told his personal assistant he needed some quiet time to concentrate on several issues. His assistant, a former army captain, always did an excellent job understanding exactly what his boss was asking for. He was not easily bullied, either. If Putin asked for time alone, he got it. It didn’t matter who came to his door or called demanding immediate access.
Right now he had difficulty concentrating on the daily, mundane demands of his job even if he was undistracted by visitors. All he wanted was information about the Estonian operation. He had always found it hard not to look ahead.
He was very pleased with the planning and work that had gone into this operation. It would cost almost nothing. Barely more than a military exercise. The distractions, financial and terrorist-wise, had not cost anything at all. And, from his perspective, had little risk.
He didn’t care about the GDP of Estonia. It was strategically important for its location. It was one less border he would have to cross when Russia decided it wanted to regain even more territory.
As soon as they had control of the country, they would start to use the ports as a means to increase trade.
Putin blustered about NATO, and he did worry about them some. That was why they had gone to the trouble of causing the distractions to the West. There was no doubt the United States had a strong military; the question was the leadership’s willingness to use it. Putin believed that by bringing terrorism to U.S. shores he would scare them into limiting their foreign commitments. Either way, he did not believe they were prepared to go to war over something as inconsequential as Estonia.
This was a political decision, and Putin knew his politics.
It was noon when Derek Walsh walked into the quiet courtyard of the three Wall Street buildings that included Thomas Brothers Financial, the tallest building to the east. Wearing a Buffalo Bills ball cap he’d found in the lobby of his hotel to cover his new hair. He sat on the first bench he came to and looked up at the building, almost forgetting what it felt like to work inside. Had he taken all of this for granted? He reached into the left front pocket of his pants and pulled out the Thomas Brothers security plug and started to think of ways he might slip into the building. After a moment, his stomach growled, and he reached for one of the pieces of classic pink bubble gum he’d grabbed from a dish at the hotel, knowing it would stem hunger in a pinch.
He looked around the courtyard and was amazed there was no one close to him. At the far end, closer to his old building, a man in a Giants windbreaker with his back to Walsh was having a serious conversation with a younger couple. To his left was the lone film crew from a local TV station, with no one manning the camera. CNN had gotten tired of the story with no real violence or connection to a missing plane.
The man talking to the young couple looked agitated, and it caught Walsh’s attention. He seemed familiar from behind, and Walsh waited a moment to see if he could get a look at the man’s face. It distracted him from all of the problems he knew he’d face if he tried to enter the building, access Thomas Brothers’ network, and retrieve the photographs on his security plug.
Someone plopped down next to him with a bag from a local sub shop. Walsh almost didn’t turn away from the man talking to the young couple. Then he nodded to his new companion on the bench, and it took a moment for him to realize who it was. Holy shit.
At least Walsh had the satisfaction of seeing how shocked Ted Marshall was, too.
It was lunchtime at the CIA, and the cafeteria, which had several mainstream chain restaurants, was starting to fill up. Mike Rosenberg did not feel guilty in the least for having ignored his boss’s order to get a handle on the protests that might start up across the country today. It had only taken a few minutes watching CNN and their moving story about the people killed from terror attacks to know that the country was in mourning and soon would switch to the next phase of grief, which would be anger. Only this time the anger would be focused not on Wall Street but on the people who launched the attacks. The streets were quiet in all of the major cities. It took him a while to find a newsfeed from a local New York station to see that the few people protesting in the same area as the last few days had no energy or enthusiasm.