Alert: (Michael Bennett 8) (22 page)

A
Russian
name.

Dmitri Yevdokimov was a Russian immigrant with no priors. His name had been on the list of the more than nine hundred anonymous tips that had come in after the publication of the subway bomber stills.

The anonymous caller had said that Yevdokimov resembled the younger of the two subway bombers from the paper and that he was a chess genius with such a negative, unpleasant, antisocial personality that the Russian-accented caller said he “wouldn’t put it past the bastard to blow up the city.”

The note on the follow-up report by the FBI agent who’d worked the lead stated that Yevdokimov had been interviewed and had provided a solid alibi for the morning of the subway bombing.

But now that his car had been found a block from the drop site, it was time for a follow-up interview, I thought as I ate a light on Bailey Avenue and roared east.

Arturo and Robertson were already on scene with an ESU breach team at Yevdokimov’s last known address, in the East Bronx. The entire block and most of the neighborhood were slowly and meticulously being surrounded by half the department. Since the bloody fiasco in Queens, we were expecting the unexpected, and no one was taking any chances.

I’d gotten as far as East Tremont Avenue when my cell rang with Arturo’s number.

“What?!” I yelled.

“We bagged him, Mike! We were just setting up when a car turned the corner, and Doyle verified the plates. We swooped in as he was getting out of his car. Not a shot fired. ESU has him on the ground, and Mike, listen. There was another guy with him. It could be Tweedledum and Tweedledee. We may have just ended this!”

“Great job, Arturo. I hope you’re right. I’m about five minutes out. Where are you taking him? The Four-Five?”

“Yep. The Four-Five. We’ll meet you there,” said Arturo.

Could it be that we actually caught this guy? I wondered as I tossed my phone into the passenger seat. I screeched around a double-parked fish truck and turned on the jets, the siren screaming.

“Let it be. Let it be. This must be the answer. Let it be,” I sang hopefully as I pinned it up East Tremont.

THE FORTY-FIFTH
Precinct station house, near City Island, was on Barkley and Revere Avenues. I parked and flew up the stairs to the DT department on two and found Arturo and Robertson outside the detective CO’s crowded office. I happily greeted them as well as Brooklyn and Doyle, who were just inside with an ESU sergeant and the precinct captain.

“It looks like them, Mike,” was the first thing out of Arturo’s mouth. “No facial hair, but they look like the suspects from the subway bombing.”

“Anything on the other guy yet?” I said. “Tell me there’s a Facebook selfie of him holding a bunch of plastic explosives.”

“His name is Anatoly Gavrilov,” said Brooklyn. “Like Dmitri, he’s claiming he doesn’t know what the hell is going on—that they’re just cousins who work together as computer programmers and were coming back from a night on the town. They claim they’ve worked for plenty of Wall Street firms, which, from our preliminary look into it, might actually be true. Odd, though, since I wouldn’t exactly peg these two on first glance as Goldman Sachs consultants.”

“You had to see the guy’s house, Mike,” said Arturo. “Hoarders, except organized. Stacks upon stacks of labeled plastic containers of comic books, chess magazines, newspapers—mostly
Daily News
dating back to the fifties.”

“Exactly,” said Doyle. “Real strange shit.”

I remembered what Kaczynski had said about the bomber being a hoarder. And that he might play chess.
Had we actually caught these guys?

I looked at the two men on the interview-room monitor on the lieutenant’s desk. The resemblance was there. They easily could have shaved their goatees because of the manhunt.

“It’s them. Has to be, right?” said Arturo.

“Nothing has to be, Lopez,” I said. “But so far, not bad.”

I SPOKE TO
Yevdokimov first.

“What the fuck is this? Russia?” were the first words out of the Russian’s mouth as I opened the door.

He was not a handsome man, but his casual clothes were expensive—a fastidious sandwashed silk T-shirt; tailored jeans.

“Why’d you do it?” I said.

“Blow up the subway?” he said, staring at me with bulging eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. I was bored. No, wait. I thought I’d start the Fourth of July off early this year, that’s it. Plus of course my mother didn’t
really
love me.”

His chair creaked as he attempted to shift his weight with his hands cuffed behind him.

“How many times do I have to say it?!” he cried as he began rocking back and forth. “It wasn’t me. I have a lot of enemies, okay? That happens when you’re a genius. Most people are stupid, and when they come into contact with a towering intellect, they become fearful and jealous. I was at work when that bomb went off. I have twenty witnesses who will testify to it.”

“Where were you last night around six fifteen?”

He stared at me as he rocked.

“I was at Orchard Beach in the Bronx. I walk my dog there. Why?”

“Bullshit. You were at the corner of Thirty-First and Dyer Avenue in Manhattan, Dmitri. Your genius must be slipping a bit, because you didn’t think about that second camera on the corner past the box.”

He laughed as he rocked, shaking his head.

“The box? What box? The jack-in-the-box? You’re unbelievably wrong,” he said as he started squeaking around again in his cheap hard plastic chair like the world’s largest hyperactive four-year-old.

“That’s the spirit, Dmitri,” I said. “Rock that boat, but remember, just don’t tip the boat over. Get real comfy, because we’re going to be here for a long, long time.”

He whimpered.

“This is unreal,” he said. “Let me guess. You guys are out of ideas, and since you have no clue who’s doing this and never will, the plan now is to find a scapegoat.”

“Your car was there, Dmitri,” I said. “A gray Civic. Your car, your plates. You were there.”

“No, I wasn’t,” he said sadly as he finally stopped squiggling around. He shook his head and looked down at the floor.

“Someone is framing me.”

“Oh, a frame job,” I said. “I haven’t heard of one of those since television came in black-and-white. Tell me more.”

He lifted his head.

“Do you play chess?” he said.

“No. I put murderers on death row.”

“Ah, very funny,” he said with a pained grin. “New York City is one of the most competitive chess arenas in the world, especially for big-money underground games. I haven’t lost a game in six years—six years—and I play every day. They set them up, and I knock them down. Some people are gracious winners. I’m not one of those people.

“I crow. Sometimes I laugh. It’s emasculating to get owned. At least I suppose so, because I wouldn’t know. And now I guess one of those very bright people I beat has had enough. This is their moment to make their mark or whatever. Why not get me back, right? School the master. Revenge! Now, please take off these cuffs. I want my lawyer. Let me out of here. I have to feed my dog.”

I THOUGHT ABOUT
what Dmitri had said as I came out of the interview room into the bull pen. Some of it actually made sense. Anyone who blew up 26 Fed with robots and all the rest of it could easily have framed this guy. A thought that was pissing me off. Were we being played again? Was this loser actually being framed?

I turned to see Emily Parker coming up the precinct-house stairs.

“I just heard, Mike. You have these guys in custody? Do you think it’s them?”

“Maybe, Emily,” I said as Brooklyn and Doyle came out from questioning Anatoly Gavrilov.

“He’s not talking, Mike,” Brooklyn said. “At least not in English, except when he demands a lawyer.”

“What about your guy, Mike?” Doyle said.

“Same,” I said.

“What now?” Doyle said.

“There’s no way we’re letting them go anywhere until we can confirm their whereabouts in the last few weeks. And months and years,” I said. “We need a full background on these guys. Immigration records, educational background, political affiliations, finances, any recent upheavals in their life that might have set them off.”

That’s when my cell phone rang.

“Mike, what the hell is going on? I thought your team grabbed these guys,” Fabretti said when I picked up.

“So did I. What’s up?”

“The bastards just made contact again five minutes ago.”

I closed my eyes. Shit. Not again.

So the Russians we had weren’t involved?
What the hell was this?

“They’ve listed their demands, Bennett. I can’t talk about it over the phone. You need to get back to City Hall now.”

WE WERE COMING
over the Macombs Dam Bridge near Yankee Stadium when a lot of frenzied chatter started up on the NYPD-band radio.

I turned it up. They were shifting roadblocks, apparently, and rerouting traffic in midtown. Traffic crews were being mobilized in various precincts and, for some unknown reason, they seemed to be shifting all traffic flow to the north.

“I just got a text from my brother-in-law, who works at Midtown South,” said Doyle from the backseat. “You gotta be kidding me! They’re calling in everyone. And I mean everyone. Every Tom, Dick, and Sally in the NYPD is being told to get their ass in to work!”

I looked at Emily anxiously. The only time I’d ever heard of that happening before was on 9/11.

The first thing the Unabomber had said to us rang in my head.

They’re going to destroy New York City—you know that, right?

“Something must be up,” said Arturo, shaking his head in the seat next to Doyle.

“Ya think, Lopez?” Doyle said, rolling his eyes.

We were thrown another curve as we were coming up on City Hall on lower Broadway twenty minutes later. Fabretti called and told us that they’d moved the mayor six blocks northwest, to the Office of Emergency Management’s new crisis center, at the western end of Chambers Street.

It was a crisis, all right. By the time we got to the new twelve-story glass building on the shore of the Hudson, they’d cordoned off the entire block. Past the roadblock, there was pandemonium on the street outside the building, where cops and National Guardsmen and techs were moving boxes and equipment in and out of trucks.

When it was finally our turn at the checkpoint, the tall, middle-aged female sergeant told me in no uncertain terms to turn around, as no one was being allowed in. I actually had to call Fabretti three times before he radioed the gate and told the hard-ass lady cop it was okay.

There was a city park beside the facility filled with dozens of cop and fed cars and SUVs parked haphazardly up on the grass. We left the car in front of an idling Office of Emergency Management bus, and as we got out we looked up and watched as an NYPD Bell helicopter landed on a helipad beside the building.

The chopper dumped out a half dozen people who looked like feds and civilian professor types. Beside the helipad, at a dock, an NYPD Harbor Unit boat was unloading more smart-looking folks. One of them had on a blue Windbreaker with yellow letters on the back.

“NHC?” I said to Emily. “What the heck is the NHC?”

“National Hurricane Center?” she said, staring at me wide-eyed.

“What? We’re going to have a hurricane now? These guys can make it rain, too? That can’t be!” Doyle said.

“All hands on deck and batten down the friggin’ hatches,” Arturo said as the Harbor Unit boat sped past in the water with a roar.

INSIDE THE SLEEK,
low-ceilinged lobby of the building, it was even worse.

Every political staffer and cop we saw rushing to and fro was looking completely freaked. I stepped aside when a tall balding guy grunted, “Out of the way!” as he hustled past with a stack of printouts. I even tried to wave down Lieutenant Bryce Miller, who appeared at the end of the lobby, but he blew right past me with his phone glued to his ear and a bewildered look on his face.

“Well, at least everybody is keeping it together,” Doyle cracked.

As Bryce Miller left, Fabretti popped out of a stairwell door and rushed over to us.

“Bennett, tell me you got something—anything—on these Russians that you just picked up.”

“Not exactly,” I said. “They’re claiming that they were framed. I’m not sure if I believe them, but their alibis look pretty solid so far. But even if they were framed, we’re definitely getting closer now, Chief. Because the real bombers—whoever they are—had to know the Russians in order to frame them. We just have to find the link. What the heck is going on here? Why is all hell breaking loose?”

“Because it is. C’mon,” he said, leading us down the crowded hallway. “These bastards FedExed a video this time. They’re showing it in the press room.”

“A video?” said Arturo.

“Don’t get your hopes up, buddy. I doubt it’s from Netflix,” Doyle said.

The video was rolling on a screen set up on the stage as we came into the crowded press room.

It showed what looked like stock news footage—people running on a beach as waves crashed at their backs.

As the terrified people ran for their lives, the same strange electronic voice from the first phone call started up like a documentary voice-over.

“During the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, two hundred thirty thousand people died within minutes as a thirty-foot-high wave struck coastal areas of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Somalia, and the Maldives. It was caused by a massive undersea megathrust earthquake. But that isn’t the only way tsunamis are created.

“Welcome to an undisclosed location,” said the voice as the image on the screen shifted.

Up-to-date digital film was showing what looked like some type of cave or mine corridor. A beam of light moved along a rough, brownish-grayish rock wall in a descending, low-ceilinged shaft. When the light and camera panned left, a thin braided-steel cable hanging from rock bolts embedded in the wall came into view. Running alongside it was a red plastic-coated cable of some kind—electrical, maybe.