The manager nodded.
Daria turned and exited the bank.
Once outside, she pivoted away from the CIA command vehicle. She moved quickly but not so quick as to draw too much attention. She was almost half a block from the bank before her hackles twitched. She spotted a man in a raincoat and hat, cross the street. She didn’t recognize him, but she knew she knew him. Or
had
known him from somewhere in the past. Dark-haired, compact, unshaven, shoulders tense under the coat, the brimmed hat failing to hide either his unruly hair or the battle-hardened eyes that raked in the scene.
The man was a player. But who?
Remembering her plan, she stroke confidently out of the zone, toward West End Avenue, turning her back on the stranger. She pulled the new mobile phone from her jacket pocket and dialed 911.
She did not call in her own “bank robbery.” The bank manager would take care of that. Daria had bigger fish to fry.
* * *
Belhadj steeled himself to avoid reacting violently. His fist clenched and he became aware of the weight of the Springfield in its shoulder holster.
The Syrian was not fooled by the leather, latex, and slicked-back hair. He recognized Daria Gibron. He had studied her for years. He knew how she moved, how she walked, the cant of her long, narrow neck, the way her head subtly swiveled, eyes raking the scene.
The meeting in New York was a trap. There was no other explanation. His communication lines were breached, his team in jeopardy.
But if all that was so, why was the damned Daria Gibron walking
away
from the scene?
He wondered what had just happened.
* * *
Asher Sahar, Eli Schullman, and two mercenaries repositioned themselves in the Jeep Grand Cherokee to watch the scene unfold.
The Croatian driver pointed through the windshield. “There. Belhadj.”
Schullman spotted a young woman dressed for clubbing. “Is that Daria…?”
Asher squinted in that direction, cleaning his glasses on the tail of his cardigan. He watched the woman in the duster stride away.
“No,” he whispered. “Keep your eyes on Mr. Belhadj, please.”
Asher slid the rounded earpieces of his glasses back into place. He noted the sound of police sirens drawing closer.
* * *
Back at Langley, everyone listened to the audio from Thorson’s command vehicle. Nanette Sylvestri caught the attention of a tech and nodded to the room’s eight flat-screen monitors. “Turn those off.”
They no longer had use for the lipstick cameras and the closed circuit video feeds from the now-pointless Forty-second Street rendezvous site.
* * *
Two of the on-foot CIA watchers picked a bus bench as a good place to perch. One pretended to text while the other read the
New York Post.
Within seconds of sitting, five NYPD units, sirens blaring and lights flashing, braked hard at the intersection, arriving from Amsterdam Avenue to the north and from Broadway to the south.
A police SWAT van roared in from the west.
Across the street from them, Major Khalid Belhadj knelt to tie his shoelace, his back to the street. When he stood, he was walking in the opposite direction.
* * *
Normally, heading into a bank robbery in progress, police are not sure about the exact nature of the bad guys, their weapons, or their vehicles. Fortunately, the woman who had called this one in was an experienced bank manager and her information had been invaluable. The caller had described the crew, their vehicles, their stakeout positions, even the fact that they had snipers.
A seven-man SWAT unit in Kevlar and helmets leaped out of the armored vehicle and surrounded the white film production truck. Cops from patrol cars organized on the two men sitting on the bus bench. These officers were clockwork itself.
* * *
In the truck, Owen Thorson realized just how badly, and quickly, the scene had deteriorated. His well-trained team and the completely contained meeting site melted like dew at dawn. Behind him, the Texan informed Langley.
* * *
Across the street, on a roof and leaning next to a tin cube of HVAC vents, the sniper leader watched the scene unfold through his scope. He caught an image of three NYPD officers with binoculars checking the roofs. That’s when he heard the approach of police helicopters.
“We are blown, people! Go, go, go!”
The snipers scrambled to disassemble their weapons and abandon their aeries.
* * *
From across the street and a block away, Belhadj watched the pandemonium. He noticed that no one was bothering him.
He thought:
Daria Gibron.
He had no idea what had just happened but he felt certain, to the depths of his soul, that no living person could foul up the works as quickly and cleanly as that hellspawn.
Seven
Operation Pegasus went to hell in a rocket ship.
The command truck was compromised, the watchers on the ground the same. The snipers were in danger of getting their asses shot off by New York’s Finest. One of two targets, the Syrian, had appeared, then evaporated during the melee while the second target, the Israeli ex-pat, never even showed up.
Owen Thorson’s crew kept a Ziploc baggie of federal shields in the truck. The CIA, for obvious reasons, doesn’t carry badges in the field. These faux IDs led to false identities in the Drug Enforcement Administration, which might—
might
—be good enough to get them out of this jam.
Thorson doffed his suit coat to show that he was unarmed, threw open the back door of the truck and, federal shield in hand, descended to the pavement. His two men followed. No sooner had the last man disembarked then SWAT officers began sweeping on board.
“Hey! Hey!” Thorson bellowed, ID pressed forward. “What the hell is this?”
SWAT officers shouted over one another.
“Down! Now! On your knees! Do it!”
Thorson surged forward. “We are DEA! You get on
your
goddamn knees! Now!”
The New York cops hesitated in the brunt of his obvious command.
“Who’s in charge here!
Who’s in charge!
”
A man in Kevlar and helmet, his laser target boring a hole in Thorson’s sedately striped tie, said, “I’m senior com—”
“This is a federal investigation! Stand your people down! Now!”
“We are investigating a bank robb—”
Thorson thrust his ID into the face of the leading officer. “I am not asking! Stand down! Now!”
Confusion spread among the police officers. The takedown had seemed to be going like a well-rehearsed dance number. But now…?
Television news crews began arriving in microwave trucks. Someone must have called them in advance, since this was record-breaking time even for them. Owen Thorson began to have a very bad feeling.
Cops and spies shouted at one another, arguing for dominance and situational protocol as the news camera crews set up.
Thorson focused on the SWAT officer who identified himself as commander. “I am a federal investigator. Get those camera crews back. My people cannot be photographed at this scene.”
“We are gonna call this in but—”
“I’m telling you there’s no time! We’re with an intelligence unit. We can’t be photographed. Entire careers are at stake here. What’s your name, mister?”
“Jacob Willis. We’re—”
Thorson spoke into his voice wand. “All units, stand down, stand down. Assist local law enforcement! Do it! Get the civilians out of the plaza now.” He turned to the SWAT commander. “Willis? This is a federal investigation. Call this in. Call whoever you gotta call in. But keep the camera crews away from my agents!”
Willis made the decision. He toggled his shoulder-mounted mike. “NYPD. We have friendlies. Repeat: Friendlies. We are red for stop. Create a cordon. Street units, keep the media at bay!”
The scene was chaos. Civilians scrambled for cover or reached for cell phone cameras, to show their loved ones and buddies,
Hey! Did you see that on TV? I was in that shit!
Police and CIA agents hesitated, both sides giving each other wary glares. Both sides wore ear jacks, and both sides had heard their bosses call a truce. But guns were waving; those things are hard to ignore.
* * *
In the Grand Cherokee, Asher Sahar watched the melee and sighed theatrically.
Eli Schullman whistled, high-low. “What in the name of a righteous God just happened here?”
Asher absently ran the pad of his forefinger over his old and jagged throat wound. “Oh, I have a few suspicions. But for now, if one of you could place the satchel, please?”
The Cypriot nodded and stepped down from the Jeep, carrying a leather satchel. The man was unarmed, so as to eliminate any chance of encountering police or the CIA. He quickly melted into the chaos of civilians in the plaza scrum.
* * *
Both cops and CIA agents began hearing more sirens approach. Someone called it in to the NYPD unit on scene. “Commander Willis!” a lieutenant shouted. “We got a bomb threat!”
NYPD Commander Jacob Willis and Owen Cain Thorson said, “What?” almost in harmony.
“Bomb threat, sir! Disposal units are en route. It’s not the bank! It’s the bookstore!”
The commanding police officer and the commander of Operation Pegasus turned together to look at the bookstore.
Commander Willis hesitated. He was still wrapping his head around a federal drug operation broken by a bank robbery. The words
bomb threat
pinged around his brain like a pinball. “It’s … what?”
* * *
Back at Langley, John Broom took advantage of the single most important piece of technology in the room, the coffeepot. He lowered himself down onto the second of three steps in the auditorium-style room, elbows on his knees.
Nanette Sylvestri, all joints and angles, rested her rear on the closest desk. “Hey.”
John looked up.
“You were right. You called it. We were being played by this Daria Gibron.”
John gave her an obligatory smile. “Cold comfort.”
She stood, taking a second to touch John’s shoulder with her fingertips, as if to say thanks.
“Why’d she do it?” John asked.
“Hmm?”
But he was staring at his coffee. “Why’d she do it?”
Nanette thought that was obvious. “Gibron? To shake her surveillance.”
He slowly shook his head. “No. That was the shtick on Forty-second Street. The Life and Death code to move our carnival uptown. If her goal was to shake her surveillance, all she had to do was move south, away from the scene. What’s with the bank job and the bomb scare?”
He looked up at Sylvestri, looming over him, as he sat on the stairs.
“She’s not done.”
* * *
A bomb disposal unit from the New York Police Department was still three blocks away as NYPD Commander Willis oversaw the civilian evacuation.
The bookstore occupied a corner storefront in the building that stretched over the six-way intersection and stood eight stories tall. It housed more than fifty businesses, both small and mid-sized. A police dispatcher began the protocol of contacting building security who, in turn, began calling the businesses. The evacuation had been practiced often enough since September 2001.
The street scene was chaotic. People streamed out of the building, slamming into one another. Others got stuck in the revolving doors as hordes tried to jam through the exits. A subway train had arrived and commuters, unawares, sauntered out into the insanity.
Police began cordoning off Seventy-second Street (east to west), Amsterdam Avenue (north to south) and Broadway, which slashed laterally between them. They didn’t have barricades yet, so they used their patrol cars.
Owen Thorson glanced back to see that one of his team had the foresight to take the wheel of the white truck and was moving it out of the likely blast radius.
Security officers in the bank directed customers to the exit, then quickly locked down all the tills and set the weekend alert for the vault. They were the only people in a three-block radius still wondering if a bank heist was under way.
Television news helicopters roared overhead.
Thorson glanced around. His eyes hunted Daria Gibron and Khalid Belhadj. He also kept an eye out for the heavy cameras and bulky microphones of TV reporters. Which is why his vision slid past the handful of bloggers and correspondents using their cell phones for still photos and video.
* * *
The sweep of the bookstore and coffee shop took twenty minutes. The bomb squad found no evidence of any explosive devices.
The debriefing of the bank manager ended up with a description of the robbery suspect—a young woman in leather and latex with a dystopian duster out of some futuristic western. The robber also had described Thorson’s command vehicle, some of his pedestrian watchers and his snipers.
At Thorson’s request, Commander Willis had secured a camera shop for the federal agents to hole up. But by that time, at least two images of the imbroglio—showing CIA agents—had been posted on New York media Web sites.
Thorson’s head reeled as the enormity of the disaster struck him. He stood inside the camera shop, fists clenched at his side, looking at a news Web site and the photo of one of his own men.
Another agent surged into the shop, spotted Thorson, and crossed to him. He held a beat-up leather satchel with a bowed handle.
“What’s this?”
The agent yanked open the mouth of the satchel, revealing a silenced handgun and two extra clips. Another agent joined them and withdrew a manila envelope. He opened it, fanned out a sheaf of legal-size sheets. Some were scrawled in Arabic. Others showed meticulous diagrams, etched by a steady hand holding a hard-nibbed pen.