As his friends skidded to a halt on the dusty, dry ground, Walsh realized how foolish he’d been and started to back away from the bomb.
Jackson was already thinking ahead and looked up to make sure someone from EOD was coming toward them. Shepherd said, “Let’s all back away from this right now.”
All the marines on the base had been in combat, and none of them were stupid. A minute later there was a huge perimeter around the lone pack sitting in the middle of the base with three Afghan bodies lying nearby.
By the time everyone was done congratulating Walsh on his heroics, he couldn’t bring himself to tell his friends the truth. He was so shaken he just kept quiet and nodded his appreciation.
One of the reasons he’d joined the marines was that he thought he could keep events like this from happening in his own country and terrorizing civilians who had no reason to ever see violence like that. Somewhere along the line his plan hadn’t worked.
Sirens brought him back to the present, and he watched emergency vehicles race toward the lower end of Manhattan and felt like he should be doing something to help. That was why he missed the marines. Their mission was always designed to help someone, either help the army gain a foothold or help a population escape from oppression. He felt like he contributed when he was in the marines.
Now he felt almost useless as he considered only his own interests. He wanted to get inside the building, access the security plug through the Thomas Brothers network, and find out who the hell had wrecked his life. Then he could put this all behind him.
He was still dressed in the white shirt and dark slacks, and he had the pistol tucked in his belt. If Ted Marshall could be trusted, he would meet Walsh just inside the door and escort him up the elevators without having to go through any security checkpoint. With the subways closed it could be a little trickier reaching Times Square to meet Tonya Stratford by six o’clock, but he was confident he could make it if he had to.
He took a deep breath as he attempted to maintain a casual stride through the cement courtyard. No one appeared to pay any particular attention to him as he approached the cement stairs that led up to the wide glass doors. He could recall standing on the landing and leaning on the pillar during a break so he could call Alena while the other brokers and bankers furiously puffed on cigarettes. Now the landing was empty as he climbed the low stairs.
Just as he reached the landing he saw movement to his left behind the pillar. He turned, but all he saw was the barrel of a pistol pointed directly at his face. A man’s voice with a slight Russian accent said, “Please don’t do anything stupid, Mr. Walsh.”
Mike Rosenberg had as many records as he could find regarding his friend Derek Walsh and the money transfer that had landed him in hot water spread over his desk. The original bank records had been destroyed in the explosion at the bank in Bern. Luckily someone had thought to scan most of the documents and upload them to the cloud, but it was slowing down the investigation. That was probably one of the intents of the bombing. People assumed in this high-tech world that everything was immediately digitized, but the fact was that businesses still generally wrote information on pieces of paper, then entered it into a computer. This appeared to be what the bank had done, and as a result, Rosenberg was left gaining information from poor scans.
Rosenberg also had the records from the cell phone number that was scribbled in the margin of one of the bank applications. There was an amazing number of calls, pages and pages of them, and the identify of the subscriber still had to be determined. Rosenberg didn’t want to pull in other analysts on this project if he could avoid it. He checked his watch and saw that it was getting close to five. Since he had acquired this through unofficial means, he felt comfortable working on it from home. Nothing was stamped sensitive or secret, and he could easily take it out past the guards without raising any alarms.
He took one last look up at a television in the corner of his office as CNN aired another report from Disneyland, with the title underneath saying, “Loss of innocence.” He had the volume down but assumed they had already created a theme song as well. All of this seemed tied together and linked to Derek Walsh somehow.
He didn’t intend to get much sleep tonight.
It was the middle of the night, and Anton Severov had been unable to sleep. After getting Amir settled in a tent with several Chechen recruits, he’d tried to grab some sleep. The little Iranian was still furious and said to him as he left, “You are not the enemy of my enemy. You are just my enemy, and you will pay for this.”
Severov gave him a hard look and said, “I could have just killed you.”
“You’ll wish you did.”
“I already do. But make no mistake, my friend. This is not the U.S. Army. I can shoot you and no one will ever ask why. You are not even a Russian citizen. So I would watch my mouth and keep my attitude in check until we find the right time and place to let you go.”
Amir just stared at him. His dark eyes hid any of the calculations he was making. At least Severov felt like he had taken Amir’s attention away from Fannie, and she would be safe for the time being. He doubted that anyone would care about her personal habits once the military aspect of this operation was under way.
Again it was Amir’s calm demeanor that made the threat so much scarier. But Severov had other things to worry about.
Derek Walsh sat quietly in the front seat of the white BMW he’d seen earlier. His hands rested in his lap as the Russian focused on the road but kept his right hand on the grip of a Beretta pistol very similar to Walsh’s. His own pistol was now in the Russian’s waistband.
The Russian had somehow managed to slip over the Brooklyn Bridge even with the increased traffic due to the subway bombing. He raced south through Brooklyn toward Brighton Beach, but he pulled off Ocean Parkway in the Midwood area and stopped in front of a six-story apartment complex that look like it was straight out of the seventies, with kids playing on the sidewalk and elderly people lounging around the front steps that led to a wide landing with several beat-up patio tables and chairs missing straps.
The Russian slipped the BMW into a spot across the street from the building and waited for Walsh to step out of the car, then walk around the hood and wait to be escorted inside. The Russian man said, “I assume you realize by now that I’ll shoot you if you try anything funny.” He let that sink in and then said, “You may not care about yourself, but think of the innocent bystanders and others that might be in the building.”
The man nudged Walsh so that he would look up at the front door of the building. Then his heart stopped. The skinny Russian who had been outside his apartment, Serge Blattkoff, stood at the front door with Alena directly in front of him. He flashed the pistol in his right hand, then briefly put it to Alena’s temple.
She stifled a scream and motioned for Walsh to come toward them into the building.
Things were not working out the way he’d planned.
28
Derek Walsh walked without resistance directly in front of the Russian. He knew the man had a gun in his back, but that didn’t even concern him now. Alena’s safety was foremost in his mind. He barely noticed the normal neighborhood activity going on around him as he climbed the stairs to the landing, entered the front door of the apartment building, and immediately turned right and slowly marched up the stairs. He thought about Alena, who had shown him tenderness and stood by him, even offering her own bank account in support. She had no business being sucked into whatever this was.