The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel (27 page)

T
he best part of Fisk’s job was when a case closed. He liked the feeling. Loved it. Maybe lived for it. All at once the tension dissolved, and he looked forward to a good night’s sleep for a change—but not right away.

Before sleeping, he wanted to savor the triumph, a win that he judged superior to that in any race, any hunt, or any puzzle: justice had been done. When a case closed, he liked to take the subway home. He would once more be any other New Yorker crammed onto the train, except he would be high on the satisfaction of having kept the rest of them safe.

He felt none of that today, though. Despite the best efforts of millions of New Yorkers. At the news of Yodeler’s demise, they threw open windows and cheered. Fisk and Chay heard the isolated whoops of joy while they were driving across the Triborough Bridge. By the time they reached Manhattan, the whoops had increased in frequency, blending together to form one constant delirious roar. On every block, people were streaming into the streets, high-fiving strangers, kind to one another, buoyant to the point—it seemed—that they might take flight.

Times Square had become the site of a spontaneous street party, just like when the Yankees won the World Series, the crowd there responding with giddy ovations to each update that crawled across
the giant
New York Times
news ticker—
NATIONAL GUARD WITHDRAWS FROM NEW YORK CITY
—and each video clip shown on the Jumbotrons, for example the Iron Apple trucks rumbling across the George Washington Bridge. On top of that, it was Independence Day. 1010 WINS broadcast the live announcement by a jubilant Mayor de Blasio: the evening’s fireworks show, which had been canceled, he proclaimed, was now back—

Fisk snapped off the car radio.

“Don’t like fireworks?” Chay said.

“I still can’t get my head around the SBC.”

“Suicide by Cop?”

“We had his home address, sure, but Boyden could have just driven to Mexico, or even hitchhiked there, and we would probably have been none the wiser.”

Chay sat back in the passenger seat, puzzling it over. “It would have been reasonable for him to think that every road was blocked off. In any case, trying to find a rational explanation for a suicide is usually an exercise in chasing your tail.”

“Maybe.” Fisk wasn’t satisfied. “The other thing is, his apartment.”

“What about it?”

The place had been sterile. No photos, no mementos. Fisk asked Chay, “Did you see any quadrocopters there?”

She smiled. “On the way in, I’d expected that the walls would be covered with Times clippings, photos of the victims, and, I don’t know, scrawled quotations from
Catcher in the Rye
.”

“It’s never like that.” Fisk turned off the West Side Highway. “But there’s usually
some
evidence.”

“If Boyden were clever enough to keep all traces out of his apartment, isn’t it reasonable to think he did his work somewhere else?”

“It would be good to know where.”

Chay’s warm hand fell onto his forearm. “Are you worried the machines are going to attack us on their own?” she asked.

He wanted to laugh. But couldn’t. “I hadn’t been thinking that
the Yodeler drones would operate autonomously, but drones are certainly capable of that.”

“Why would Boyden preprogram them?”

Fisk wished he knew. “What if he had a partner?”

“Isn’t being a loner the trait most common to serial killers?”

“I think it’s that they kill people. But, yeah, loner is a common trait, and if anyone fit that profile, it was Boyden. In which case . . .”

He dialed Evans. The call went to voice mail. Unusual for Evans not to pick up before the end of the first ring, he thought. He left a message asking Evans to toss the name Darren Draco to the group of FBI agents following up leads on unmanned aerial vehicles, parts, and related purchases.

As they turned onto Ninth Avenue, intending to skirt the crowds in Times Square, they heard the crowd break into a chant of “N-Y-P-D, N-Y-P-D.”

“Why don’t you let yourself enjoy this?” Chay asked.

He couldn’t think of a good reason. “An old spook once told me that sometimes paranoia keeps you alive, and sometimes it keeps you from living.”

She grinned. “Maybe you’re casting about for a reason for us to continue our working relationship.”

He wished it were that simple. “That’s probably it.”

“Well, as long as I’m a target of enemy spy agencies, I’d like to retain you.”

He turned left onto West Fortieth. “Okay.”

“There’s just one thing I need to tell you.”

“Okay?”

She said nothing.

He turned left again, onto Eighth Avenue. “Hit me,” he said.

“It’s about the documents.” Whatever it was, she appeared to be wrestling over telling him.

“What about them?”

“I’m afraid they’ll come between us.”

He pulled the Ram up to the curb fronting the Times Tower. “Chay, your source is dead. Who are you protecting now by keeping the cache to yourself?”

“That’s a good question,” she said.

Fisk ventured, “If I were to somehow come into possession of the documents, the bull’s-eye would be taken off your back.”

“But then it would be on yours.”

He shrugged. “There’s already a bull’s-eye there.”

She leaned closer to him. “Can we speak off the police record?”

“Of course.”

“I need immunity.”

His stomach tightened. “Have you cooperated with a foreign intelligence service?”

“No, no, it’s not like that.”

He wasn’t convinced. What else could this be? His inclination was to protect her regardless. Unless getting him to feel that way had been her objective in wrangling an invitation to his off-the-grid bed? Wouldn’t be the first time in the annals of spying.

She said, “I need to keep fighting for the constitutional protection of the communications between journalist and source. Also, if I were to hand over or even discuss documents that Merritt showed me in confidence—that would betray his trust. Why would a source ever trust me again?”

“There’s always an escape route.”

“Except when you’re trapped.”

“We could work it so that a collection of the documents found its way onto the Internet. We would simply omit anything that jeopardized national security. Or better still, we could turn this into a counterintelligence coup by adding documents designed to mess with our enemies’ heads. For instance, we include an Above Top Secret memorandum about our mole at the Chinese Ministry of State Security.”

“That would work except for one part.” She looked at the footwell. “I don’t have the documents.”

He figured he’d missed something. “What happened to them?”

“All of the material I ever had was excerpted in my story, the same documents Merritt simultaneously uploaded to WikiLeaks, which WikiLeaks posted a few hours after my story was published. I promised Merritt I wouldn’t reveal what I’d seen and what I hadn’t, for his protection, not until he’d uploaded everything he had.”

“I thought you had terabytes sitting on a flash drive somewhere.”

“Unfortunately, I perpetuated that notion.”

“Why?”

“Simple. To get what every journalist wants. Access. Access to you, for instance. And that sure paid off. If I don’t go up to my desk now and write a behind-the-scenes story of the Yodeler investigation that puts me on the Pulitzer short list, it will be because another enemy spy grabs me first.” She looked up, her eyes rimmed red. “I’m sorry.”

He drew her toward him, kissed her on the forehead. “As long as you’re not in league with our enemies, we’re good. Also, as confessions go, trust me . . . that’s nothing.”

A
t Intel, Weir and Evans, of all people, tried to convince Fisk that he’d done his job, done it well, and that the case could be closed. He’d run into them on his way in. As Weir put it, in his inimitable way, “I think you’re fucking nuts, Fisk.”

Evans quickly added, “Burt means that in a good way.”

“He gets it, he gets it,” said Weir, before turning back to Fisk. “I mean, here you’ve nailed this case closed, and you’re still all OCD about clues—which I’ve come around on, by the way. It gets you thinking of stuff no one else does. With Yodeler, it made a life-and-death difference. I was totally wrong about you, man.” He offered a beefy right hand.

Moved by his contrition, Fisk shook hands. “You’re not all bad either,” he said.

“As we just told Chief Dubin, we’re going to submit you for the Director’s Award for Excellence,” Evans said.

The Director’s Award for Excellence, Fisk knew, was given in recognition of FBI agents as well as outsiders judged to have made an outstanding contribution to the FBI and its mission. Agents who won considered it a career highlight. Fisk was humbled.

“But the Director’s Award’s just a trophy—looks just like the ones my kids win every year just for showing up to tee-ball practice,” Weir said. “Which is why I want to give you FBI special agent
Burt Weir’s Award for Excellence, which is whatever the hell you want at Old Town. Ev and I are heading there right now for the longest lunch of our careers.”

Fisk knew that the Old Town Bar, just north of Union Square, had been an FBI-agent favorite for more than a century. His mouth watered at the thought of an Old Town burger—maybe the best of any pub’s in the city—washed down by a Black and Tan.

“First let’s cross Darren Draco off the bucket list,” he said.

“His name turned up on one of our lists, but it turned out to have nothing to do with drones. So, Old Town?”

Fisk couldn’t leave it at that. “Which list?”

Weir said to Evans, “Put our guest of honor’s mind at ease, will you?”

Evans checked his phone. “Using the identity of Darren Draco, Boyden had a slew of part-time chemical-plant jobs, including, this week, at an industrial-cleaning-products manufacturer in Hoboken called Bantam Chemical. So his name went automatically onto our watch list.”

“Why?” Fisk asked.

“Bantam bulk-orders a number of different chemicals that can be weaponized.”

“Was Boyden making use of his doctorate in chemistry?”

“He’s held similar jobs at other cleaning-supply companies and agricultural chemical plants all over Connecticut. Two weeks here, two weeks there, filling in for chemical-plant and systems officers who were out.”

“Better cooking pesticide than meth,” Weir chimed in while, pointedly, turning to go.

Fisk wondered aloud: “Hoboken’s a haul from where Boyden lived, in Norwalk, isn’t it?”

Evans waved away the concern. “Fifty miles, but he could have done the drive in just over an hour if he’d avoided traffic.”

Stepping toward the elevators, Weir said, “That wacko probably was lucky to get work anywhere.”

“I’ll meet you guys over at Old Town,” Fisk said. “I just have a couple of quick things to wrap up here.” It would be a matter of minutes, he thought, to rule out any connection between the case and Boyden Verlyn’s employment at a company that bought weaponizable chemicals in bulk. Hopefully, it wasn’t the portent it seemed.

The two FBI agents headed off with the air of children on the last day of school. Fisk started toward his office, burning to research Bantam Chemical. Something was off. He didn’t know what, but he felt it, like a splinter in his mind.

Dubin intercepted him and exclaimed, though no one was in earshot, “Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, the man of the hour.” He pointed Fisk to the corner office. Following him, the chief added, “I’d say you hit a home run, Detective, but it’s more than that. It’s like you were due up to bat with the team trailing in the bottom of the ninth, with three outs, meaning the game was over. But you’d seen something on the last play, and you had the umpires look at the replay, then reverse the call, letting you bat. Then you smacked the ball out of the stadium.”

“Thanks,” Fisk said, wondering about Dubin’s true agenda now. Or, rather, the PR team’s agenda.

Dubin dropped onto the couch. He scowled when Fisk didn’t immediately take one of the chairs across from him. Fisk sat, but at the edge of the cushion, poised to spring up and out.

“Need a Coke?” asked the chief. “Or a seltzer, maybe?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“How about lunch? You have lunch yet? Sally can order from El Quixote.”

“Wish I had time.”

“Got it.” Dubin tugged his shirt cuffs into alignment. “Real quick, then, about the Tel Aviv gig . . .”

By necessity, Fisk had pushed the transfer to the back of his mind. “I haven’t had a chance to think about it yet.”

“That’s okay. See, the other thing you accomplished with your game-winning home run was cause management to reassess sending you to Tel Aviv. They want you to stay, and the city needs you to stay. So how about it?”

Excellent, Fisk thought. He expected that there would be a price, though. “Maybe,” he said.

“Also I’d gotten to thinking that David Rettenmund would be the man for Tel Aviv. We could send him there to pick up tech tips from the Israelis.”

David Rettenmund—R2—was an excellent choice for Tel Aviv, Fisk thought. R2 was young and single, would kill for the opportunity to work abroad, and was probably uniquely suited to thrive in the tech-intensive Israeli environment. Fisk had doubts about Dubin’s motivation in suggesting R2 as the man for the job, though. Was it because the chief, aware of Fisk’s affinity for R2, sought to gain leverage?

Fisk feigned indifference. “Okay.”

“The Department just needs you to do one small thing,” Dubin said.

Huge surprise. “Use the city’s box at Yankees games more often?”

“Close. I know this isn’t your shtick, but Mayor de Blasio wants to present you with a key to the city in Riverside Park before the fireworks ceremony tonight.”

A key to the city didn’t sound that bad to Fisk. With it, he would be like a made man in New York—able even to cut through red tape.

But Dubin, shifting uncomfortably on the couch, had more. “There are just a few things they’d like you to say.”

“Like what?”

Dubin went to his desk and snapped up a printed sheet of paper. “This just came by messenger. In light of current events, the PR folks are afraid of their e-mails being electronically intercepted, so now they’ve gone old school with the commo.” He glanced at the
document. “So what they want you to do is decry previous Intel policies.”

“Decry?”

“Not my word.” Dubin lowered himself into his desk chair, slipped on a pair of reading glasses, and scanned the memo. “They want you to quote from the Declaration of Independence as a way of condemning the spooky tactics and gadgets we’ve gotten flak for. Do you know the part where Thomas Jefferson talks about what happens when government becomes destructive of people’s unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”

Fisk knew the opening of the Declaration of Independence by heart—unfortunately to the tune from the Broadway musical
1776,
of which his music teacher at the American School in Abu Dhabi had been the world’s biggest fan.
Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government
.

“My only problem with that is I don’t think we’re doing anything wrong,” Fisk said. “I wish New Yorkers could leave their apartment doors and windows open when there are strangers in town. But until we can trust the strangers—”

Dubin raised a hand, like an ax, poised to cut him off. But he didn’t. Instead he tugged at his own lip. Fisk had seen this before—albeit rarely. The chief was taking something he’d said into consideration.

“You know what?” Dubin said finally. “Why don’t you say what you just said?”

“I wouldn’t get the key.”

Dubin rose with energy Fisk hadn’t seen from him in a long time. He balled up the printout and jump-shot it at the corner wastepaper basket, missing badly. “The memo got lost. They should have e-mailed it. All you need to say is the Department’s going to continue to protect people. We’re fucking spies, not marketing executives.”

Fisk was glad Dubin had come around. The sentiment was diluted, though, by his nascent theory of what Boyden Verlyn had been up to at Bantam Chemical.