The Lost Codex (18 page)

27

V
ail’s phone buzzed as she turned onto the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, headed back to Manhattan. She handed it to Uzi, who was riding shotgun.

“Text from Russo. He wants to know if we’re still in town.”

Vail merged to the right lane. “Does he have something for us?”

“I’ll ask.” As soon as Uzi sent off the message, DeSantos’s phone rang—and seconds later, Vail’s vibrated.

Uzi consulted the display. “Russo said to meet him at Centre Street in front of city hall—if we can get through. They’ve closed down all the streets in a three-block radius. The bridge traffic is being diverted.”

“We’ll get as close as we can and walk if we have to. Did he say what it’s about?”

“Apparently,” DeSantos said, hanging up, “our case. That was Knox. He doesn’t have any details but the FBI’s now on-scene. He’s waiting for an update. And he’s on his way.”

“That can’t be good.” Vail accelerated and moved into the far left lane. “Text Mo, give him the address and tell him to meet us there.”

“If it’ll do any good,” Uzi said. “He’s ignored us all day.”

“I got it,” DeSantos said as he started tapping on his phone.

Uzi started to hand her back the Samsung when it vibrated yet again. He glanced at the display and said, “It’s Tim Meadows.”

“Answer it.”

He put the phone on speaker.

“Hey, Karen. I found something that’s gonna make you very happy.”

“Hi Tim,” Uzi said. “What do you got?”

“Uh—I thought I called Karen.”

“You did. She’s driving.”

“Oh, you law abiding citizens you. So I lifted fingerprints from the Eastern Market crime scene. You know the perps crashed into the building with the armored car and then got out and started firing their AK-47s, right? Well, they sprayed the place pretty well before blowing themselves up. I had our techs collect every single shell casing. We just got through testing all of them. The heat of the firing destroys DNA, so that was a dead end. And the heat burned off the body oils we usually need to lift a print so we used gun bluing and found 159 prints. Of the ones where we were able to get a significant number of points, we got matches on all of them.”

“Meaning?” DeSantos asked.

“Meaning the same two guys loaded all the magazines. The prints weren’t from bystanders who picked up the casings and tossed ’em down.”

Vail moved into the middle lane, then leaned closer to the phone. “Did we get a hit?”

“How about, ‘Nice work, Tim. Not many techs could’ve lifted those prints.’ You really have to know what you’re doing with gun bluing or you screw it up—the whole cartridge would’ve turned black. And we did it 159 times.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Uzi said. “If I wasn’t holding the phone and if Karen wasn’t driving we’d give you a round of applause.” Vail and Uzi shared a grin. They enjoyed yanking Meadows’s chain. “So that hit—yes or no?”

“No. I can work miracles but I can’t create data where it’s not. The perps are not in AFIS.”

“Email the prints to me. I’ll have Hoshi send them to Interpol. I’ll get them over to Mossad too.”

“And Tim,” Vail said, “You’re the best. You know we love you.”

“And we love giving you a hard time,” Uzi added.

“Yeah, well, the feeling’s mutual.” Meadows waited a beat, then added, “The part about giving you a hard time.”

Their next call was to Knox. They were not on a secure line so they refrained from discussing names.

“The lab lifted two sets of latents off the spent shell casings at our most recent crime scene in your neighborhood,” DeSantos said from the backseat.

“Do we have IDs?”

“Nothing in AFIS,” Uzi said. “We’re checking elsewhere.”

Vail signaled to exit the expressway and merged into the adjacent lane. “There’s something else we need you to look into.” She summarized the salient points of what the rabbis had told her regarding the Aleppo Codex. “We’ve got some disagreement as to whether or not we should pursue this and how it might or might not be related to the offender who’s calling the shots.”

“Understood,” Knox said. “I’ll look into this and see what I can find out. There are some things going on behind the scenes and I have a feeling this could be related. I’ll keep you posted.”

Uzi hung up and turned around in his seat to face DeSantos. “Not sure I like that—‘things going on behind the scenes’?”

DeSantos snorted. “There are always things going on behind the scenes. We just don’t always find out about them.”

28

V
ail exited onto the Brooklyn Bridge, a 130-year-old neo-Gothic span that was the first steel-wire suspension bridge ever built. The brown bolt-and-steel structure that connected the borough to Manhattan was majestic and internationally recognizable.

“I’ve always liked the Brooklyn Bridge,” Vail said. “You know that a woman played a major role in its construction.”

DeSantos glanced out the side window at the Manhattan Bridge. “Yeah, right.”

“Seriously. The engineer got injured while they were building it and couldn’t leave his apartment. So he taught his wife the complex mathematics involved in bridge building and she supervised construction for ten—”

“I see something.” DeSantos pointed. “Up ahead.”

Yeah. I see something too. Red taillights. Traffic.

Vail thought of exiting at Park Row South but changed her mind and continued on to Centre Street. “I’ll get as close to the police barricade as possible.”

But before they could approach, the flow of cars along the two lane road slowed—and then stopped.

Uzi sat forward in his seat and bobbed his head side to side. “There it is.”

Vail saw it too. A knot of first responder vehicles was visible up ahead, their flashing lights flickering through the barren trees. “Whatever it is, it looks pretty major. They’ve got that huge emergency response vehicle there.”

They made it to the forty-story Manhattan Municipal Building, one of the largest and most picturesque government buildings in the world. Above its tall, columned facade, engravings in the stone trumpeted the city’s three names and the years that it began using those monikers: New Amsterdam, 1625; New York, 1664; and Manhattan.

Vail nosed the car up to the barricade near the secured entrance to the arched cobblestone driveway, where a deserted guard booth stood.

They got out and started toward the NYPD vehicles when a cop emerged from behind a cruiser and yelled at them to stop.

“FBI,” Uzi called back and held his creds high above his head as they wove between the cars and walked toward the wall of police vehicles ahead of them.

They made their way past the various officers and federal agents who lined the street.

“Russo here?” Vail asked, her credentials now folded inside out and protruding from the pocket of her jacket.

“Don’t know a Russo,” the tall black man said.

“Captain, NYPD.”

“Yeah. Still don’t know him. Lotta brass onsite.”

Vail lifted her Samsung and started to text him when she heard her name called. Russo was weaving his way through the crowd of personnel.

“Good thing your red hair is easy to spot in a crowd.”

“Yeah, it’s like a beacon. Lucky me. Good thing I don’t do undercover work.”
Oh, wait, I do.

“So what do we got?” Uzi asked.

“One of our mobile radiological sensors tripped going over the bridge. We traced it using the domain awareness system to an overnight delivery truck. Had a team pull it over and ESU got the driver out with a bit of a fight. Wish I could show you but Hazmat’s got control of the scene. They think it’s contained but they’re taking readings as—”

Russo’s phone buzzed. He answered, listened a second, then said, “Be right there.” He reholstered his phone and waved them forward. “We’re clear. No leakage of the material. It’s safe to approach.”

Russo led the way along Centre Street, past the massive columns of the municipal building, to the secured area.

“What’d he have in the truck?” DeSantos asked.

“Strontium, forty kilocuries.”

“Whoa. So they really
were
gonna set off a radiological bomb.”

Vail elbowed his side. “Did you question my interrogation skills?”

DeSantos shrugged. “We had doubts. No offense.”

“We?”

“Me and others.”

Uzi sheepishly looked away.

“Offense taken.”

“Because of that phone call,” Russo said, “what you told me, I had them turn on all the sensors in the city, double the number of sweeps.”

Uzi turned to Vail. “You told him what we got from Ghazal?”

“The president hadn’t yet raised the alert. And even if he had, I doubt they’d be thinking dirty bomb. Calling Russo was the right thing to do.”

“The right thing to do was to have my office tell the JTTF in New York and have them deploy what they felt was necessary.”

“My way was faster,” Vail said. “And it worked, so don’t give me shit.”

Russo snorted. “Still haven’t heard nothin’ from the JTTF about a potential dirty bomb. Just sayin.’”

Uzi’s face shaded red. Vail was certain he was angry with the head of the city’s JTTF, not Russo.

“I’ll look into it,” Uzi said.

“Yeah, you do that. Meantime, like I said. Thanks,
Karen
. All those serial killers you chase? Ain’t nothing compared to the number of lives you saved on this case.”

Uzi sighed in concession, then looked out into the sea of uniformed personnel. “What was his target, do we know?”

“No idea. We haven’t had access to the truck. Now that we’re clear, CSU can start digging in,” Russo said, referring to the department’s Crime Scene Unit.

“Check out the GPS. And the driver’s phone. And any emails on his smart—”

“Karen. We got it.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Russo turned to a nearby detective. “Get a search warrant for the GPS and cell phone.”

“How’s the driver?” DeSantos asked.

“He’s had better days.” Russo must’ve seen DeSantos’s furrowed brow because he added, “Asshole’s dead.”

They arrived at the vehicle, which was swarming with uniformed and Hazmat-suited personnel.

Twenty minutes later, Vail made out the commissioner and mayor, several captains, chiefs—there was no shortage of brass. Russo was part of the gathering. The group conferred for a couple of minutes, then Russo joined Vail, Uzi, and DeSantos.

“So?” Vail asked.

“So they were going to release a dirty bomb inside the Freedom tower. Beyond the symbolism, twenty thousand people would’ve been killed—in the tower alone. If the bomb detonated on any of the middle or upper floors, the cloud would’ve hovered over the city, probably even into Jersey.”

“Holy shit,” Uzi said.

“Nothing holy about it,” Russo said. “Pat yourself on the back, Karen. Because that’s what I feel like doing right now. If you hadn’t told me they were planning this, I doubt we would’ve stopped it.”

DeSantos’s phone buzzed and he consulted the display.

“I’m gonna finish up here.” Russo checked his watch, then started backing away. “I learn any more, like an ID on the driver, I’ll let you know.”

Vail nodded at DeSantos’s phone. “Anything?”

“Knox will be here in about forty minutes.”

UZI’S LUMIA RANG. He recognized the number and excused himself, walking down the street a bit.

“Isamu, what have you got for me?”

“Your person of interest. He met with a Middle Eastern–looking guy on Canal Street. I was able to ID the guy as Amer Madari. He doesn’t have a record, but he has been to some hot spots the past two years. Pakistan, Syria, and Gaza.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning he’s been to Pakistan, Syria, and Gaza the past two years. I’m not trying to be funny. That’s about all we can say. We know those areas are rife with terror groups and terror activity, but we don’t know enough of who this guy is to know what it means.”

Uzi sighed. “You’re right. Thanks for the call. You find out anything else, let me know.”

“You want me to keep following this guy?”

That was a good question. Uzi closed his eyes. If Madari turned out to be a terrorist, he would kick himself for not taking action. Then again, Fahad was a CIA operative. Maybe his meets with people who have made trips to hotbeds of terror could be explained. But maybe not. “Tell you what, switch to Madari and let me know if he meets with anyone we should know about.”

“Sure thing.”

Uzi thanked him and texted Rodman, asking him to look into Amer Madari. He did not explain, merely labeling him as a person of interest. He then took a few minutes to think before rejoining Vail and DeSantos.

One thing was certain: his interest was piqued. The question was, at what point did he have something worth discussing with Vail and DeSantos? Or even Knox?

29

W
hen Vail rejoined Uzi and DeSantos, Knox had arrived and was getting a briefing from police commissioner Brendan Carrig. It did not take long before the discussion got animated, at which point Knox stalked off to meet with the director and an assistant director of the FBI’s New York field office.

When he finished and gathered with Vail, Uzi, and DeSantos, his jaw was set, his eyes narrowed. “Where are we on this thing? Anywhere?”

Uzi shifted his feet. “Slow progress. It’s hard to know exactly what we know and what we don’t know, but we’ve got a lot of pieces.”

“We got a few more pieces this morning,” Vail said, “from the rabbis.”

Knox glanced around, then led them down the street to an area with fewer officers around. “I looked into that. There’s something you three need to understand. And this is not to go anywhere—Where’s Fahad?”

“Good question,” DeSantos said. “He’s been AWOL all day. Hasn’t answered any of our texts or calls.”

Knox absorbed that, then moved on. “This is extremely sensitive. What the rabbis told you about the codex is true. The fact that Sahmoud has those pages has tremendous relevance to what’s going on.”

“What
is
going on?” Uzi asked.

Knox gave another look around. It was starting to make Vail paranoid.

“As we speak, there are covert peace negotiations going on in Cairo between the Israelis and Palestinians. Very sensitive. We’ve been through this before, so you know the deal. The president wants it done. He’s putting everything he has behind it.”

“That’s nothing new in peace negotiations,” DeSantos said. “Sometimes they’re done outside the public eye so things don’t get sabotaged by the media, or by politics. Whatever.”

“There’s a difference this time,” Knox said. He shot a glance around them and inched closer. “According to highly placed sources—so even
I
can’t confirm it—the Palestinians are holding two items over Israel’s head. One is the codex. The other …” He looked at their faces then settled on Uzi’s. “The other is something best explained by your father.”

Uzi swallowed hard. “My father?”

An agent came up to Knox from behind. “Sir, excuse me for interrupting. Commissioner Carrig wants another word with you. He seemed a little put off.”

“He did, did he? Why don’t you tell him—” Knox forced a chuckle. “No, I’ll do it myself. Thanks.” He backed away and pointed at Uzi. “Your father, Agent Uziel.”

Vail appraised Uzi, then shoved her hands into her back pockets. “So you going to tell us what the problem is?”

“What problem?”

“You looked like you wanted to crawl under a rock when Knox mentioned your dad.”

Uzi turned away. “You know how it is. Family. We’ve all got our shit.”

DeSantos shook his head. “That may be, but that’s not what’s going on here. You respected your dad. You had a good relationship with him. You looked up to him.”

Uzi took a deep breath. “Orders are orders. Let’s go.”

As they turned toward their car, a glass window beside Uzi’s shoulder shattered and the unmistakable crack of a rifle echoed off the tall buildings.

“Down!” DeSantos yelled, dragging both Uzi and Vail lower with fistfuls of their jackets. He pulled them behind an NYPD cruiser parked at an angle by the curb.

They had their handguns out—as did the nearby officers and federal agents in the area.

“Anything?” Uzi called out.

Various replies—all indicating that no one had eyes on the shooter.

Vail snuck a peek over the top of the sedan. “Any idea which direction it came from?”

Uzi came around the edge of the car to get a look at the shattered windshield then craned his neck toward the buildings. “Gotta be in front of us, two o’clock.”

DeSantos was taking his time, scanning the rooftops. In the background, Vail heard men yelling, calling out orders.

“Not likely the municipal building or city hall—security’s too tight and I’m sure they’ve been checking rooftops. Not saying a sniper can’t get in, but if we’re looking at most likely scenarios …”

“I don’t see anyone,” Uzi said. “One shot. He had his shot, took it, and missed. He’s gone.”

DeSantos straightened up tentatively, eyeing the vicinity. “I agree.”

The calls of “all clear” were heard as the law enforcement officers of multiple agencies moved back into the streets, some heading for the neighboring buildings to close off the exits and execute a thorough search.

Good luck with that. The municipal building alone is a block long and forty stories tall.

The three of them continued to scan the rooftops as they talked.

“Is it a stretch to think I was the target again?” Uzi said.

DeSantos holstered his handgun. “I was thinking the same thing. If we’re right, it’s safe to say they were serious about the threat they pinned to that woman’s chest.”

Vail leaned back against the nearby car. “Can’t say for sure the bullet had your name on it, but it’s the most obvious. Especially after what happened in Times Square.”

Uzi pulled a toothpick from his jacket pocket and ripped it from its cellophane wrap. “Let’s get out of here, go visit my father. See if we can get some answers.”

AS THEY HEADED BACK TO UZI’S TAHOE, he could not shake the thought that, once again, only one person knew for sure that he was en route to the crime scene. Well, two: Knox and Mahmoud El-Fahad. Could Fahad have tipped both snipers that Uzi was going to be onsite?

As he mulled this disturbing thought, he pulled out his key fob and hit the unlock button.

The SUV exploded skyward, blowing glass and metal and rubber in all directions.

The three of them hit the pavement nearly simultaneously, instinctively covering their heads with their hands in an almost useless gesture.

Car alarms blared in all directions as men and women came running toward them.

“They’re seriously pissed at you, Boychick.”

“Ya think?” Uzi pushed himself up and yawned twice, trying to restore his hearing.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Vail said, pulling on her ears, “but maybe you should go back to DC, lock yourself in your house and not come out till we catch these bastards.”

Uzi dusted off his leather coat. “Not gonna happen.” He looked around. “But we are going to need a new ride.”