Nikki Heat: Deadly Heat Part 25

Raley and Ochoa came in from their all-nighter at Hinesburg's apartment. Benigno DeJesus followed them in his navy evidence collection unit windbreaker carrying two cardboard boxes of items he and his crew had collected there. He said they were headed to the lab and then to Internal Affairs. But since he also had to bag and tag Hinesburg's desk, he'd brought along the apartment boxes to give Heat a chance to look them over before they went downtown. "Just wear gloves," he said.

Rook and the squad gathered around as Nikki lifted the lids and carefully picked through the contents, replacing each in its carton following examination. She scanned the stack of open mail and bills, finding nothing useful. Underneath a toiletry kit of noncontroversial prescription meds, she found an evidence-bagged pocket pistol and held it up. "A Smith & Wesson M&P9 s.h.i.+eld," said Detective DeJesus in his precise, curator's manner.

Through the cellophane bag, Heat examined the 9mm, a favorite for deep undercover work because of its subcompact size. Feller scoffed. "Hinesburg had backups for her backups-for all the good they did her." Nikki pondered that thought then returned the pistol to the box.

"Anybody check this computer?" she asked, holding up a brand-new laptop.

Detective Raley hinged it open and, while it booted, said, "Spent a couple hours on it. Nothing juicy saved on the drive, that I could find. No maps, no calendar entries for Sat.u.r.day. But she had a link to a cloud e-mail service with the 'keep me logged in' box checked, so I was able to access it. Mostly Web shopping receipts, but there was one sent e-mail Hinesburg must have forgotten to delete." He paused while it loaded. "Check it out."

He turned the screen to Nikki, and she read it twice out of disbelief. The recipient's e-mail address was some alphanumeric scramble, not a proper name, but the Web domain ended in .fr, signifying France. The subject line read: "Heat." And the message itself said: "Arrives today. Hotel Opera, Rue de Richelieu."

Rook said, "That was our hotel. And the date she sent this is the day before you and I went to Paris last month. Where we met Tyler Wynn."

"Ready for the real smoking gun?" said Detective Ochoa, who excused himself and reached past Heat into the second box. He came out with a vanilla cell phone and held it up.

"Is this what I think it is?"

Ochoa handed it to her. "Can you believe it? Genius actually kept the burner cell. Slipshod and half-a.s.sed to the end."

While Heat opened the Outgoing Calls list, Raley pulled a slip of paper from his vest pocket. "The last two outgoings match these phone numbers I pulled. They fit the times for the warning calls that went out to both Salena Kaye and Vaja Nikoladze. You'll see there's two other numbers in Recents. One was Tyler Wynn's apartment. The other, I tried calling to see what it was but got a disconnect."

Heat said, "I recognize this number... At least it looks familiar." With a furrowed brow she took out her own cell phone and scrolled a few seconds until she found what she was looking for. She grabbed her keys and raced to the door, calling out, "Roach, Feller. Get your cars and follow me-now."

NINETEEN.

Overhead s.p.a.ce heaters recessed into the apartment canopy took the chill out of the morning air on the Upper East Side. Heat and Roach waited behind the potted firs that flanked both sides of the lobby entrance. A black luxury town car sat poised in the circular cut-stone drive with the engine shut off. Detective Feller had replaced the car service driver and the motor block ticked as it cooled. "Lobby now," he whispered into his walkie-talkie. "Doorman first, suspect behind."

Raley and Ochoa nodded an acknowledgment to Heat from behind their cypress. She heard the automatic inner door of the vestibule slide open and put her hand on her holster. Then the outer doors parted at the s.h.i.+ny bra.s.s frame. The uniformed doorman led the way, waving the town car up for his tenant. As soon as the second man pa.s.sed by, the detectives stepped in from both sides, bracing and cuffing him.

"Hey! What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l is this?"

Heat said, "You'll be riding with us today, Mr. Maggs."

Carey Maggs sat with his hands clasped before him in a relaxed fas.h.i.+on on the table of Interrogation One. "You can't simply detain me without cause. I may not be a United States citizen, but I am afforded due process." He may have possessed the cultured air of Oxford and worn the bespoke threads of a millionaire businessman, but when Nikki responded to his protest with stone silence, the Brit reacted the way they all did when they were dirty, from gang bangers to sous chefs. His eyes roved to the magic mirror, either to wonder who lurked behind it, watching, or to check himself out to see how he was doing-or both. Maggs didn't appear as uncomfortable with her silence as she would have liked, and he brought it back to her, sounding anything but fazed. "I've heard about these sort of bully-boy tactics on the news, but I must say, Detective Heat, I never expected this sort of grot from you."

"Well, I guess we all hold a few surprises."

"Perhaps you could end the suspense a bit and tell me why you s.n.a.t.c.hed me up like some common criminal and brought me here."

Heat held her cards. Experience had taught her not to get ahead of things, to let this interview build, in spite of the crus.h.i.+ng time pressure she felt. If she jumped right to the information she needed-the when and where of the bioterror event-Maggs would smell her desperation, and the power balance would tip to him. If she kept him worried about how much she already knew, he might give up more, and sooner. So Nikki didn't answer his question. Instead, she adopted a detached mode to match his.

A moment pa.s.sed. She withdrew a photo of Petar Matic from the file in front of her. "When we last spoke on the telephone, and I asked if you could identify the man in this picture, you stated that you didn't know his name but that you had seen him lurking near your apartment the week Ari Weiss stayed with you. The week my mother was murdered."

He didn't bother to look at the picture. "That's correct."

"You also said you were suspicious of him and called the police to report it." He flicked his brows and shrugged, showing agreement. "We've run a computer check of records at your neighborhood's precinct, the Nineteenth. There's no record of any call, any complaint, any visit to your building."

"Maybe the police didn't log it. Or, who knows...?" At last she could see the slightest fissure in the facade of calm as he improvised. "Maybe I didn't actually call it in myself. I may have left it to the doorman, yes."

"Which is it, Mr. Maggs?"

He shrugged. "Eleven years is a long time, love."

Heat smiled at the man across the table she believed had ordered her mother killed after she uncovered his terror plan. "You don't need to tell me."

Her smile unsettled Carey Maggs. Heat liked that. But just as she was about to move to her next question, the door burst open and Bart Callan strode in followed by Yardley Bell. "Heat, we're tagging in," said Callan.

"Excuse me," said Nikki, rising. She opened her arms, gesturing them out.

Carey's eyes widened. "Who the h.e.l.l are they?"

n.o.body left. Anything but. "I'm Special Agent Callan and this is Agent Bell, Department of Homeland Security. We have some questions for you about your terror plot."

As the words were spoken, she saw the look on Maggs, saw her carefully built sandcastle kicked over, and cursed to herself. "Agents?" she said. "Maybe we should take a moment?"

Bell stood with her arms folded and glowered at Heat. Callan jerked Nikki's chair over by its back so he could plant one foot on it and lean on his knee, looming over the table. "Let's start by finding out what your number was doing on the cell phone of a spy we busted in a bioterror plot."

"Am I to understand you are accusing me of terrorism because someone happened to have my number in a phone?" He turned to Heat. "f.u.c.k this, I want my lawyer."

Nikki called a time-out. They left Maggs to stew at the table and adjourned to the Observation Room. The shouting began as soon as the air lock closed.

"How about a courtesy heads-up before you barge in on my interrogation?"

Bell said, "You're talking courtesy? Seriously?"

"I looped you in about the arrest."

"An e-mail after the bust is not looping in," said Callan.

"Not looping in is what screwed the pooch at the helipad last night," added Agent Bell. "We should have been there for the takedown. Not playing catch-up."

Heat pointed through the gla.s.s at Maggs. "His phone number was in Recents on Sharon Hinesburg's burner cell. I didn't want to lose him."

Yardley Bell moved nose-to-nose with Heat. "Bulls.h.i.+t. You made another unilateral decision to cut us from this process. From our own f.u.c.king case. Why?"

"Because," said Nikki, "there are too many moving parts."

"What's that mean? You don't trust us?"

Heat didn't answer. Just refused to blink. Callan finally spoke, in a more civil tone this time. "Let's hash all this out later. We have a mission. What have you gotten from him so far?"

Nikki stepped away from Bell. "Feigned innocence. I was just starting to piece him off when you came in."

Yardley stepped away muttering, "Jesus..."

"All right, let's be pragmatic," Callan said. "First, he gets no lawyer."

"I guess I could invoke an Article Nine and hold him for a psych evaluation," suggested Nikki. "I'd like to buy some time for my detectives to report back. I've got crews tossing his home and business, and Rook's doing some financial digging."

"What kind of financial?" asked Callan.

Before Nikki could respond, Bell jumped in. "Why are you farting around with a bogus psych hold, Heat? The National Defense Authorization Act allows federal officers to detain any terror suspect for an indefinite period, period." She brandished the federal DHS badge hanging around her neck. "Now are we a team?"

In their rekindled, albeit fragile, spirit of cooperation, Special Agent Callan dispatched his top forensic specialists to join Heat's detectives at Carey Maggs's apartment atop the Upper East Side high-rise, as well as at his brewery gastropub at the South Street Seaport. Much as in the searches that had been made at Salena Kaye's SRO in Coney Island, Vaja Nikoladze's compound upstate, and Sharon Hinesburg's one-bedroom, they'd hunt for material evidence like computers, mail, and receipts, as well as sniff-sweep for bioagents.

Saying he felt his "a.s.shole puckering by the minute" as noon arrived one day before the bioterror target date, Callan also activated military resources to stop and search every truck coming into Manhattan, augmenting the spot checks NYPD had already initiated at key zones around the island. He also triggered the army and National Guard roll-out of the disaster medical apparatus they had discussed in the bunker at Homeland headquarters. The Fort Was.h.i.+ngton Armory uptown in Was.h.i.+ngton Heights plus the two armories at opposite ends of Lexington Avenue were being converted to vast indoor medical triage centers. Underneath the RFK Triboro Bridge, the soccer fields of Randall's Island would quietly overnight become a military tent city for ma.s.s casualties.

Higher-ups held to their decision not to announce the coming threat. "Without specifics, all it would cause is panic." At that moment, everyone in that precinct knew what that felt like.

They decided to let Detective Heat continue as lead in the interrogation. Unfortunately Carey Maggs decided to continue his pose of indignant innocence. Several hours into his genteel stonewall Detective Rhymer slipped into Interrogation One and pa.s.sed Heat a file of research he had pulled from his bank canva.s.ses. She perused it and gave Maggs a look of significance. "Let's talk about Salena Kaye. You recall Salena Kaye, right?"

"By name I do. But only because you've been flogging on about her as if we should be mates. Wouldn't know her if I tripped on her, as I've made clear."

"We know that Salena Kaye was busy lately contacting radical jihadists, searching for volunteers to martyr themselves. I called it volunteering, but she has been offering a hundred thousand dollars to the families of whoever signs up."

"If you say. I still don't see how this has b.u.g.g.e.r all to do with me."

"One hundred thousand dollars. Where would a registered physical therapist like Salena Kaye get her hands on a spare hundred grand or two?"

"Ask her."

"She's dead. And you know it, don't you?" Maggs kept his eyes pa.s.sive during the silence that followed. His expression gave away nothing. "I want you to tell me. Whom did she hire and where are they?"

"I guess we're stumped" was all he said.

Accustomed to the denials, she pressed on and held up a scanned page from the file Rhymer had brought her. "Just got some interesting information here. Salena Kaye's personal account received a wire transfer for two hundred thousand dollars this week from a bank named Clune Worldwide Holdings." She set that page down and took out the next sheet. "This is a copy of the receipt from the credit card Salena Kaye used at Surety Rent-a-Car the other day when she tried to rent a box truck. We ran a search and the line of credit was funded through Clune Worldwide Holdings." She paused. No response, so she produced another page. "The personal bank statement of Sharon Hinesburg."

"Another name you insist I should know."

"See these yellow highlights?" She held the statement up; he barely gave it a glance. "These are one-thousand-dollar payments wired electronically into Hinesburg's account from Clune Worldwide Holdings."

"And?"

"And," she echoed, turning another page, "Clune Worldwide Holdings, an offsh.o.r.e bank located in the Cayman Islands-aka Switzerland with palm trees, when it comes to money laundering-is the same bank that happens to maintain the account for Mercator Watch, the charitable organization you fund."

"Means nothing," he said. "The bank I use also happens to pay those other people? Lots of banks pay other people. One bank in those TV adverts seems to pay Vikings. Does that make their other customers Vikings, too?" He chuckled.

They allowed Maggs a supervised bathroom break, and when he came back into Interrogation to find Rook seated beside Heat, it took him off balance, if only slightly. He covered with more nonchalance. "Glad, actually, to have an investigative journalist join the proceedings. If they sod me off to Gitmo, I'll need someone to record the injustice."

"Full disclosure, I'm not here to chronicle the Free Carey campaign. I'm helping Detective Heat stop you from killing innocent people."

"Well, at least we understand each other."

"More and more," said Heat.

Rook continued, "You might even say that I understand everything, Carey. All of it." Maggs's eyes darted to the papers the writer had brought with him. "See, one of the perks of being an investigative journalist is I have this cool list of high-level sources. It's an interesting relations.h.i.+p. Sometimes I owe them payback for favors, sometimes they owe me. I have a high-level guy at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and, hoo-rah, it was his turn to put out.

"There's an old Watergate catchphrase. 'Follow the money.' It was sort of the 'What's in your wallet?' of its day." Rook winked. "Now, with my SEC friend's help, it only took me a couple of hours to follow yours and gather your investment portfolio. I know the entire distribution of your wealth. Well, at least the part you don't stuff in your shoes when you fly to the Caymans."

Maggs strained to read the pages upside down as Rook arranged them in the order he wanted before he continued. "Mercator Watch. Your foundation that monitors international child labor abuse. Actually more a fund. Let's set that aside and look at your investments. All profitable, congratulations." He turned a page. "Pranco Corporation, European government contracts to build low-cost housing in Third World villages decimated by war. Nevwar Enterprises, multimillion-dollar, multinational manufacturing company employing ex-prisoners of conscience from totalitarian regimes." He looked up from the page. "It goes on and on like this, Carey. One company after another turning a solid profit on radical ideals and causes."

"None of that makes me a f.u.c.king terrorist, does it?"

"On the contrary, it's like Brewery Boz being founded on the Charles d.i.c.kens principle of exposing social injustice."

"And corporate greed," said Maggs in a blurt of anger. "My portfolio is all ethical capitalism, beating the f.u.c.king one-percenters at their own game. There's no crime in that." It was the first time Heat had seen him worked up.

Rook nodded agnostically and turned to the last page. "All fine. But this one here. This stands out as, I dare say..." He turned to Heat.

"An odd sock?" she asked.

"Let's see. You are the princ.i.p.al shareholder in a BeniPharm Corporation." They watched Carey Maggs's blink rate double. "Now, the odd-sock part is that BeniPharm's the only investment in your jacket that is not in the radical scheme." Rook returned to the SEC data. "It says here the company was formed in 1998 with your cash and a token buy-in by minor partner, Ari Weiss, MD... now deceased. The company rolled along and along, operating solely on paper, for all intents, until two years ago when it branded itself with a signature product. Do you want to say what it is, or shall I?"

Maggs cleared his throat and said in a tattered voice, "Smallpox medicine."

"Interesting," said Heat.

"BeniPharm's prospectus says it's uniquely positioned itself as the world's leading source for the smallpox antiviral remedy. I didn't realize it until Detective Heat got hers, but if you get this medicine within five days of exposure, you won't get smallpox."

"That's right," said Maggs.

Heat asked, "Why throw all that effort into a medicine for an extinct disease?"

"Paranoia," said Rook. "We live in an era where nuts can unleash bioterror. In fact, according to this, BeniPharm has a contract from the United States government for half a billion dollars' worth of your company's smallpox medicine."

"Nothing wrong with that. I... we... perform a public service."

Heat said, "And what would happen to your profits if there were a smallpox outbreak?"

"You're reaching-"

"Or if smallpox were weaponized and released in a terror event? In a major metro area?"

"This is a frame."

"What would it do?" Nikki asked. "Would your profits double? Triple? Would other countries buy in? Tell me, what would you gain? Ten times the profit?" Heat rose, shouting, slapping a palm on the table. "Is that worth killing thousands of innocent people? Was that the cost of my mother's life, you son of a b.i.t.c.h?"

Spent, Heat stood there panting. The room grew still.

At last, calmer, she spoke. "Do one right thing, Maggs. Tell me when and where."