But our legal investments would be subject to substantial losses. Our vast worldwide real estate holdings, including hotels and casinos, would suffer if terrorist attacks curtailed travel to those areas. Since the 1980s, organized crime had taken control of most of the world’s airports, and we took in $650 million a year in lost luggage items alone. We were deep in the financial business pool, silently owning everything from multi-billion-dollar hedge funds to board control of four major banking institutions. Name any business you can think of and we were not only in it, odds were better than even we controlled the levers and made the bulk of the decisions.
And that is where terrorists could cause us to lose millions, if not billions. These legal enterprises relied on stability, and terrorists—and their Russian allies—brought only chaos. The illegal operations were accustomed to ebbs and flows in profit margins. The legitimate operations, needing to respond to the demands of an appointed board, operating under the intense gaze of legal authorities and, in many cases, subject to investors and stockholders, had to function in a clean and calm business environment. The risks taken there had to bring in more money than was laid out. Acts of terror brought havoc to such stability.
I watched Jimmy make several gestures, moving his fingers slowly so I would understand the shorthand version of conversation we had perfected over the years.
“You’re right,” I told him. “We’ve wounded Raza’s network, but only enough to let him know we’re looking in his direction. It gave us the time we needed to put our pieces in place.”
Jimmy looked at me, his usually cheerful face now a determined mask of defiance and strength. He balled his two hands into fists and slapped them together several times. I stood and rested my hands on his shoulders, bending down to meet his gaze. “Yes, it’s time to let Raza see how hard we play,” I told him.
Jimmy’s face muscles relaxed and his upper body was no longer tense; he was satisfied we were headed on a course he approved.
“We still have time,” I told him. “Let’s put it to good use.”
He smiled. I moved his wheelchair out from under the shade of the tree and pushed him toward Jack and Hugo, both deep into a game of fetch on the Great Lawn. I stopped and watched as my son and his puppy rolled in the grass and chased one another under the glare of a hot sun. Jimmy turned his head and looked up at me. “No one gets close to them while I’m gone,” I told him. “I don’t care if it’s a UPS guy. No one. If they do, you give the order and end them right then and there.”
Jimmy opened his left hand and ran his right index finger across the veins on his wrist.
A blood oath.
Chapter 32
Toronto, Canada
We sat at a large table in the back of the dining room in the Sutton Place Hotel. I had a small stack of folders and sealed manila envelopes piled on my left, a glass of ice water close to my right elbow. Around the table were the members of my Silent Six team, David Lee Burke beside me. Also in the group were Big Mike Paleokrassas and John Loo, who had been working on loan to us from the Yakuza. Files and spreadsheets surrounded Big Mike and John.
This was a special crew of trained assassins in our company:
Jennifer Malasson, not yet thirty and already with a dozen kills to her name, as lethal with a knife as with a rope.
Robert Kinder, thirty-five, an Iraqi war veteran and one of the military’s most proficient snipers.
Franklin J. Pierce, twenty-eight, named after the former President, a martial-arts warrior, adept at killing with either hands or feet.
Carl Anderson, forty-one, a former government chemist who could poison an opponent a dozen different ways.
Beverly Weaver, thirty-two, the only member of the group to have worked in law enforcement—a bomb unit in North Carolina. She was the munitions expert of the team.
Burke kept the Silent Six functioning as a unit and was the one charged with making the key decisions once the team was out on the field.
Burke had been in Special Forces and served some of his time in Italy, and he was looking for a second career that would incorporate the skills he had acquired in nearly a decade of service. He was not the type who would find satisfaction working as a consultant in a war zone or locking down security concerns for high-end corporations. He was a man born for battle and was at his best when the fight looked its bleakest.
I’d been in the middle of my first European venture, sent overseas by Uncle Carlo to see if I could broker a truce between the Camorra and the Casalesi, a branch of the Neapolitan mob that decided they were due for a bigger cut of the money flowing into southern Italy. When my attempts at a peaceful resolution failed, stronger and bloodier measures were called for. Burke came aboard to help in what eventually turned out to be a brutal three-month war, with heavy casualties sustained by both sides.
During that skirmish, Burke had shown a natural ability to lead and an unquenchable thirst for battle. He was also loyal and had proven trustworthy on enough occasions, to put that matter to rest. Soon after the dust had settled, the bodies buried, and a truce arranged, I asked him to come to New York and hired him. He was to put together a team, work under everyone’s radar, and report only to me. When the group wasn’t needed, they were free to live where they pleased, as long as they stayed clear of trouble, took no freelance work, and had a solid cover for how they earned their money. They were each paid high six-figure salaries, with Burke taking down one million a year plus expenses. I wanted each to be beyond reproach, not open to an easy bribe or tempted by better offers elsewhere. While I trusted Burke, he would need to recruit team members that he could hold to the same standard. He went out and filled the specific needs the group required, and so far they had never once failed me. This, however, would be their biggest challenge to date. I knew before I spoke a single word that not all of them might make it out of the hell I was about to send them into.
It was a fact that would soon become apparent to everyone else at that table as well.
I pushed the folders aside and watched as Burke took one off the top, then gave it to Weaver, the team member closest to him. I sipped some water and waited until all the folders had been passed before speaking.
“Those are your targets,” I told them. “There is background information on each and you will get more from Big Mike and John before you leave. These are all kill-shot situations. We’re not looking for information. We don’t want to know who else is involved in their network. We just want them dead.”
“Any concerns about collaterals?” Kinder asked.
“That can’t be avoided,” I said. “When these guys are on the loose they like to hide in the company of women and children. I would prefer to keep the casualties to a minimum, but do what needs to be done to bring down the primary.”
“You each have eighteen names spread out across a number of countries,” Burke said to the group. “I’ll work up a plan as to who goes where and when. Needless to say, expenses are not an issue. Getting the job done is the priority.”
“We on a clock with this?” Malasson asked.
“In a way,” I said. “You have a lot of ground to cover and a lot of targets to take down, and I understand all of that can be time-consuming. Under normal circumstances you would have three to four months to get the hits lined up.”
“Under
these
circumstances?” Pierce asked.
“Two to three weeks,” I said.
“Some of the higher level targets will have extra layers of protection,” Burke told them. “I think we save the more difficult ones for last and knock off the easier hits first. That’s how I’ll map it out. But if you see an opening for one of the bigger names on your list, you catch a break somewhere down the line, do not be afraid to deviate from the plan and go after the hit. Understood?”
Each member gave him a knowing nod, glancing at the names and the brief biographical sketches of their designated targets. I let them sit quietly for a few moments and then looked at Big Mike and John and gave them the green light.
“You won’t be alone on this,” Big Mike told the group. “Some of you may know me or John by reputation. Which, at this point, is as it should be. But from today on, think of us as your best friends. Before you leave here you will have cell numbers on each of the faces in your folders. You will also have their last known addresses, their favorite restaurants, where they meet up with friends for a game of cards and where they meet when it’s time to plan a new terror attack.”
“We have cloned all their existing numbers,” John Loo said. “But as each of you knows, these guys change numbers like we change shirts. That should not be a concern. When those numbers change, you will be sent the new ones as soon as we have them. The time lapse won’t be long.”
“Terrorists keep at least five phones active at any one time,” David Lee Burke said. “How can we know the one you cloned is the one we should follow?”
“Our crew monitors conversations on all the phones in Raza’s network,” Big Mike said. “We know everything that’s said on every call, but what we send to you is essential information only from the most prominent of the lines.”
“Still, it’s not close to being an exact science,” Weaver said.
“We’re not claiming it is,” John Loo said, not at all on the defensive. “We can get you in close, give you access to ongoing conversations, and narrow down location sites. The rest is up to you.”
I glanced at Big Mike and nodded. He was as impressed as I was by John, who looked like a younger version of his uncle, Kodoma, the head of the Yakuza, and had many of the same mannerisms. He was tall, his dark hair kept long, strands occasionally covering a thin, handsome face highlighted by a set of charcoal eyes that took in everything but revealed little. He showed no emotion as he spoke, relaying the facts as he knew them, and was the only one at the table dressed in a suit.
“The combination of the information that’s in the folders plus what’s being supplied to you through the cloned phones should be enough to get you within the target zone,” I said.
“You want anyone brought back?” Anderson asked. “For information, leads to other cells?”
“They all die,” I said. “Every name on that list.”
“What about intel we might find from the kill site?” Burke asked. “Should we make the grab or leave it?”
“If there’s time, take anything you think can help in any way,” I said. “Destroy anything you can’t carry out. The fewer footprints you leave behind, the better.”
“How much firepower can we expect in return?” Malasson asked.
“Raza is going to be expecting some heat,” I said, “just as we expect some from him. What I’m counting on is that he won’t look for it to be this big and this fast.”
“What about the Russians?” Pierce asked. “They putting manpower into this along with their money?”
“Nothing heavy as yet,” I said. “But Vladimir is not a sideline guy. He likes to control the action. If he sees Raza’s crew taking heavy casualties, he won’t hesitate. He’ll send in as many guns as he needs to slow it down.”
“Sounds like we have ourselves a job to do,” Burke said. He patted his folders into a neat pile and watched as the other members began to do the same, ready to bolt the room and head out for a mission from which some of them might not return.
“There is something I need you to bring me,” I said. I waited as they all eased back into their seats and focused their attention on me.
“What?” Burke asked.
“A name,” I said.
“We pick up a lot of chatter on the cloned phones,” Big Mike said. “Three-quarters of it is useless bullshit. Sometimes they slip up and talk about a job being planned or a recruit coming in, stop chatting in code long enough for us to break it down and figure it out.”
“So you want the name of a recruit?” Kinder asked.
“No,” I said. “I want the name of a traitor.”
“It’s still fresh information and we’re still trying to piece it together,” Big Mike said. “But we think there’s someone on our team doing business with Raza or Vladimir or both.”
“From your crew?” Burke asked, turning to look at me.
“Too soon to tell,” I said. “I also don’t know how deep into this they are, but the fact that the other side feels comfortable enough to talk about it on cells is a serious problem.”
“Just general chatter or something deeper?” Burke asked.
“What we’ve picked up so far is mostly location talk,” I said, “where we might be heading, where we might be staying. The only names mentioned have been Big Mike’s and mine.”
“And if any of you are curious—and you should be,” John Loo said, “Mike and I have been checked and cleared.”
“Anyone you suspect?” Burke asked me.
“Until I know who it is,” I said, “I suspect everyone not in this room.”
“If my team gets closer, I’ll make sure they pass it your way,” Big Mike said. “But I think the better shot is squeezing one of the higher-ups in your folder to get what you can out of him.”
“If you do get a name,” I said, “don’t call it in. Bring it in. I don’t want to risk giving him a heads-up.”
“Does he get put on our target list?” Malasson asked.
“No,” I said. “He gets put on mine.”
Chapter 33
Florence, Italy
Raza stood in the center of the large hall in the Galleria gazing up at the massive sculpture of Michelangelo’s
David,
completed when the artist was only twenty-six. The room was crowded with tourists taking photos, students taking detailed notes, children staring in wonder.
“It is a work of beauty,” Avrim said.
He was just to Raza’s left, nestled between a cluster of Asian students staring intently at the imposing sculpture and a well-dressed American woman in her mid-twenties leafing through a photo history of the
David,
a black Sharpie clutched between her teeth.
“And in a few weeks time? Who knows?” Raza said. “It could end up as damaged as it began.”
“But I thought—”
“That this would be our decoy,” Raza said, quick to finish Avrim’s thought. “There still may be truth to that. It does make a certain sense to have anyone intercepting our calls—the police, other groups, Vladimir, the American—to have them think this is our target and deploy their resources here, leaving us free to do our damage elsewhere. But then, it might also make sense to ruin not one site but two at the same time. If that were to occur, then I would truly have left my mark.”