In less than thirty seconds he was walking out the rear door and navigating through the lot where cops were battling more protesters. He acted like he was about to enter one of the brawls but simply slipped around the cop wrestling with an irate female protester with braided hair and a long, patterned dress.
He never knew stepping onto the sidewalk in New York could feel so liberating. He broke into a slight jog, but no one noticed because half the people on the street were running from something.
Now he had to run to the truth.
9
Derek Walsh slowed his pace about fifteen blocks from the Seventh Precinct building. His head was spinning. What had he done? He had acted. That’s what he had done. Taken action like the former marine he was. It felt good. He liked standing up to a bully even if it was the U.S. government. Or at least a couple of FBI agents. He had acted on instinct, and now he couldn’t have regrets. He had to play this hand out.
Walsh walked along Grand Street into Chinatown and kept going until he came to a stop on Mulberry Street, feeling like he just needed to catch his breath and clear his head. The goddamned FBI had his wallet and cell phone. All he had was a plastic bag holding his security plug from Thomas Brothers Financial. The streets were much more orderly here. No one was protesting, and there was no open violence. His run along Grand Street had showed him the chaos in the financial district. He had intended to use this to his advantage, but there was no way he was heading back right now. Walsh needed a plan, which had to include cash and a change of clothes. He might have blended in along Wall Street, but here he was as out of place as an Oakland Raiders fan at a Super Bowl.
He had to think and consider his position. The marines had spent a lot of money to train him to react under stress, and it frustrated him that none of that seemed to do him any good at the moment. The only person he could think of to call was Mike Rosenberg at the CIA, but he doubted his friend could help, and he was certain it wouldn’t look good for a fugitive to be calling a CIA employee.
A police cruiser came down Mulberry with its lights on but no siren. For a moment Walsh was worried they were searching for him; then he realized they were moving much too quickly and were just more reinforcements going down to the financial district.
Walsh had no idea how any of this had happened or who made the trades on his computer. He didn’t think there was any way someone could get past the security plug issue. If someone had stolen his plug and returned it to him, no matter how far-fetched that seemed, then he had to get back on the Thomas Brothers computer network and access his security plug to see the photographs of whoever made the trade.
There was only one place he could go and only one person he could trust. He intended to slip back into his apartment on the Lower East Side and get some money and clothes. Then he would go to Alena’s apartment closer to the Columbia campus and explain everything to her. He had to be careful because her phone number was in his phone and there was no telling how far the FBI would dig.
He stood up and started to walk casually along Mulberry Street. Soon enough he’d see his chance to blend in with the crowd, but this was not the place.
Bill Shepherd looked at the gates of the base and decided to call up a platoon of marines to augment the army personnel already dealing with growing crowds of protesters. The occasional rocks and bottles sailed through the air, breaking harmlessly on the asphalt in front of the soldiers. There were German police directly in front of the crowd trying to keep them back, but it wasn’t clear who they were trying to protect.
Shepherd had grown more and more concerned as the day went on and he listened to reports on the news. CNN was known for exaggeration, but it looked bad. He had called his new lady friend, Fannie, twice to make sure she was okay as she traveled. It concerned him that he only got a voice message. It was a sign of how interested he was in her that he kept the small German phone in his pocket. He’d purchased it mainly for calling his friends Mike Rosenberg and Derek Walsh. There was something in him, a rebellious spirit, that made him want to keep some of his life private from the Marine Corps. Like his girlfriends. He never talked with them about his work. He’d learned a lesson from what had happened to poor trusting Derek when the cute German girl stole his company credit card. Shepherd missed his friends. Now he felt like he was alone in the Corps.
Just like in combat, he had no real clue what the generals were planning and what the global picture was, but here at his own base, with a threat in front of him, Shepherd knew what was expected of him and how to lead men.
It was hard to imagine that a week ago he was training for a Russian attack and trying to keep his men from being bored. Now a couple of bad financial transactions and terror attacks had caused even more problems than tanks rolling across the Fulda Gap.
He saw some movement in the crowd, and then a light rose up in the twilight sky. It was a Molotov cocktail, and that caused some concern among the men standing before the base. They tracked it as it rose in the air in a small arc, then shattered on the ground, spreading flames in front of them.
Part of the crowd was energized by the act of violence, but Shepherd noticed that several of the protesters didn’t want anything to do with it and started to file away from the base.
His marines came jogging up behind him with their weapons at port arms. He held them behind the the army MPs for now, but there was no way anyone was getting on a U.S. military base without feeling some major heat.
Fannie Legat did not stay long to admire her handiwork in Bern. She’d lingered for only a little more than an hour after emergency vehicles converged on the collapsed ruin of the bank, just to make sure none of her intended targets emerged alive from the devastation. No one did, and three rescue workers were killed when one of the remaining arches tumbled over. That was a small matter but would play well on TV. The story had already reached the international markets, and many commentators wanted to tie it to the violence that was growing in New York and London. That was fine with her.
There was no time to rest. First she had to drive to the airport, where she was catching a private plane to Estonia. She was supposed to meet her superior in Tartu late that night to update him. Then she would begin her new assignment, which would start in Estonia and last several days. As usual, she had been given no details other than that her language ability was needed and she’d be helping another person. She was assured it was all part of the same operation and she would see her reward soon.
Joseph Katazin felt invigorated by the meeting with his contact, who clearly had a better overall view of the operation than he did. But now the time had come for him to take an active role. The fact that he had just gotten a call from one of his contacts down at the Seventh Precinct saying Derek Walsh had escaped from custody turned the situation from tense to nerve-racking. There were just too many moving parts of this operation for him to keep clear in his head. Even though his job was to focus on the financial aspect and elements in New York, he still was talking to contacts in Europe to coordinate the timing of events. It went against virtually all of the protocols they had used over the years for secrecy, but someone had decided this operation was important enough to throw caution to the wind.