MR. MILLER: Yes. The morning after. We had already pulled a late night and put together some interesting information we had to run by them.
3
Savas and Cohen stepped out of the Crown Victoria in front of 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan. A towering glass skyscraper rose into the sky before them. Known as the Goldman Sachs Tower, the new forty-four story structure gleamed in the morning sun as it looked down from the northernmost end of Battery Park toward the World Financial Center. Savas could almost feel the power radiating from the monolith.
He closed the door and stared upward. "No logo. Not a letter or word on it. World's most influential financial institution, and it's basically anonymous."
Cohen stepped beside him. "It is kind of eerie, that's for sure. But I'll take it over yesterday's carnage, thank you. Forensics was picking things up with tweezers. I've had enough bombings for one lifetime."
"Hits too close to home." He turned to look behind them. "Look at those playing fields. Still brand new. This whole area was rubble and soot."
Cohen looped her hand under his arm. "It's hard to take, I know."
"Thanos died a few blocks from here. A lot of people did. Sometimes I think they should have left it like that. Broken. Raw." Kids squealed as they kicked a soccer ball across the field. "World moves on, and somehow we're all supposed to be okay with that."
"John, here they come."
Representatives from the bank rushed out to greet them. Two men and a woman, they wore appropriately moderate smiles for an occasion that consisted of their CEO having been blown up the day before, ushering them politely inside. Savas paused momentarily as they entered the lobby.
“That’s impressive.”
It was spectacularly cavernous, the ceiling higher than an opera house, works of modern art draped thirty feet in the air above them. It reminded him of standing in some of the newer airport terminals, only that everything was fashioned at several notches above the quality required for mass transportation hubs.
The woman nodded. “We’re very proud of our new building and contributions to the revitalized financial center,” she began, the delivery so perfect it seemed long rehearsed. “There are twenty-one million square feet and six trading floors, each larger than a football field. It’s a very environmentally friendly building with floor ventilation, cooled by a hundred storage tanks containing nearly two million pounds of ice. Views of the Hudson River and New York Harbor are available for our most senior members.”
“Like CEO Craig,” said Savas.
The woman’s faced paled. “Yes. Please, follow me.”
The building spanned two city blocks, and to Savas it felt like the walk to the elevator took them across the length of it. No one followed them inside, and the three Goldman employees were silent as the elevator sped upwards and stopped on the eleventh floor. Stepping out, they found themselves in a second, less gargantuan lobby, which required yet another trek to a second bank of elevators. Windows covered the walls and portions of the ceiling, bathing their path in light.
They passed the second bank of elevators and stopped in front of a doorway. The woman swiped a card over a reader and then keyed in a passcode. The door opened, revealing a short corridor to a smaller, lone elevator door.
“For our top executives,” she began as the elevator opened, “we have implemented enhanced privacy and security protocols. This elevator leads to the offices of the CEO and other top Goldman Sachs staff.” Her eyes darted away. “Unfortunately, we do not control the security outside of Goldman.”
Savas could see pain in the woman’s face. “You seem to have known Jack Craig well, Ms.?”
“Greenwald. Susan Greenwald. Yes, I was his personal administrator. His right-hand woman, you might say. Geoffrey and Kendall here are my assistants.” She nodded toward the two men. “As we discussed on the phone, you will be meeting with our interim CEO Donald Freiheit.”
The elevator doors opened. Before them an expansive conference room ran across the floor, centered on an enormous table of cherry wood. At the end of the table nearest them rose a man who ambled over in their direction.
Susan Greenwald reached over and tugged on Savas’ jacket, whispering to him. “I don’t care what you hear about us in the press, but Jack was a good man. He’s done more for this country, for this city than anyone I know. Find his killer.” With that she turned on her sharp heels and entered the elevator, the doors closing quickly as she vanished from view.
“Agents Savas and Cohen,” came the voice of Donald Freiheit. “Two names that need no introduction.”
Freiheit shook their hands, an expression of genuine interest on his face. He was a short man, bordering on stout, with thick glasses and a mass of gray and black curls that gave him more the look of an elder artist at a poetry slam than a new CEO. He led them to the table and poured water for each, sitting next to them like a professor before two students at office hours.
“We’ve had several rounds with the NYPD and FBI since yesterday. All of Jack's scheduling data, emails, phone logs — they're now in your hands one way or the other, either from us or your national databases. I’m not sure what else I can tell you, but I'm honored by the visit.”
Savas nodded to Cohen and she got immediately to the point, removing several photographs from her briefcase and placing them before Freiheit. “Surveillance footage from a handful of operating CCTV cameras identified some very unusual elements in the bombing.”
Freiheit glanced at the images. They were grainy, the black limo blurred in the still shot, even the street signs hard to read at the resolution afforded. However, his eyes immediately gravitated to the anomalies she referred to.
“What is this black thing on the top of the car?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out, Mr. Freiheit,” she said. “Look at this image, taken from another camera closer to the exit ramp from FDR Drive.”
“It looks like some giant bird or something. What’s it doing?”
Cohen shook her head. “We don’t know, and we were hoping that you might could shed some light on it.”
The CEO adjusted his glasses. “Me? How?”
Savas bent forward motioning between the images. “Between the time when the vehicle containing Mr. Craig took the exit ramp and the time the bomb exploded, something descended onto the roof of the car. Our analysts are still conferring with the military, but our best hypothesis is that we’re looking at some sort of remotely piloted aircraft, an unmanned aerial vehicle that was tracking the CEO’s position and then moved to intercept the car immediately before the explosion.”
“Unmanned aerial vehicle?” Freiheit seemed stunned. “You mean a drone?”
“Yes,” said Cohen, “a drone.”
“Doesn’t look like a drone.”
“Not like the military aircraft shown on TV,” said Cohen, “but there are hundreds of other military and civilian models of more designs than you could imagine out there. We can’t get enough information from these low quality images to positively ID the model, or even establish that it is a drone, but it’s our best working model right now.”
Savas focused intently on the new CEO. “Is there any way this could have been Goldman surveillance? Your Ms. Greenwald was extremely protective of Mr. Craig. Does your company use drones to monitor or keep tabs on Goldman execs?”
Freiheit shook his head vigorously. “Absolutely not. I’ve never even heard it floated as an idea. I’m not sure it would even be legal.”
“It wouldn’t,” said Savas. “Not yet anyway, but the laws on domestic drone use are in dramatic flux. Some honest mistakes could have been made.”