Watching the Thomas Brothers building satisfied several issues. It kept him hiding in plain sight, and he felt like he was accomplishing something by waiting for Ted Marshall to leave the building. He knew his boss would likely come out what was widely considered the rear door even though it opened onto the street. Usually people came through the courtyard, but the protesters made that impossible today.
Walsh was jostled as someone made their way through the crowd. No one on his side of the courtyard was protesting, even though the crowd was fairly large and attracting more spectators as the day wore on. He glanced over his shoulder and realized there were a couple of uniformed cops coming through, and he stepped to his right. It wasn’t until the cops had passed him that he noticed Tonya Stratford from the FBI and her sour-looking partner following behind the officers.
Just as she turned her face toward Walsh, he managed to look over his shoulder away from her. He found himself holding his breath waiting for a tap on the shoulder, but nothing happened. When he turned his head back, the two officers and two FBI agents were in the courtyard walking quickly toward the front door. Several bottles were launched from the protesters’ side and crashed to the ground near them, making one of the cops jump straight in the air and land cursing at the protesters.
He noticed Agent Stratford look over her shoulder in his direction rather than where the bottle had come from. Maybe it was time to change position.
Joseph Katazin had taken a cab from his business but had to abandon it after about five blocks because of the goddamned protesters. He took some satisfaction in the fact that he was the reason they had poured out onto the street, but he also judged them as spoiled Americans with too much time on their hands. In Russia they would riot over important things like no food or no heating oil when the temperature had dropped below zero Celsius. It was all part of his plan, and he could report with confidence that this part was working to perfection.
The lone wolf terror attacks, at least the ones in the United States that he had some knowledge of, had also sent a chill up the spine of the American government. You could stop conspiracies, but a single, determined man, who believed he was going to paradise if he simply wrapped himself in explosives and walked into a crowded store, was another story. Two of the attacks would be slow in developing because the jihadists had poured a strain of anthrax into the air-conditioning and ventilation systems at Macy’s and Grand Central Station. It would be a week before people really started feeling the effects, but the impact would be dramatic. By then no one would care where the Red Army was in Europe. They would be screaming for action about a terror attack on their own soil.
Katazin was happy he didn’t have to work with these Middle Eastern nuts after this. They’d served their purpose, and he was glad they weren’t currently focusing their rage on Russia, but they were unstable. He had put some thought into what drove them. He could only classify it as an unnatural rage against Western societies. A sociologist he’d spoken with said it was fueled by the disparity of wealth in the region, with the majority of the Islamic world being in desperate poverty while the rich made the 1 percent in the United States seem like paupers. The ruling family of Saudi Arabia, for example, had no concept of cost or money. So much flowed in from oil revenues that they just assumed most people lived like them, choosing to ignore the homeless children and starving families virtually at their doorstep.
The proof of the extravagance of these ruling families throughout the Arab world was shown by outlandishly tall buildings and even completely man-made islands in the shape of palm trees. Billions of dollars were spent merely to satisfy the whim of a few wealthy families.
Another theory went that the Islamic world was pissed off that they were so far behind the rest of the world. One fact that had been pointed out was that the small country of South Korea had more intellectual patents filed in the last ten years than the one billion Muslims around the world. That spoke volumes about their interest in educating the masses and spreading the wealth.
Whatever the reason, and for however long, Katazin had harnessed that rage and was using it to great effect.
The streets of New York were in chaos as he made his way west, toward his best chance to find the wayward Derek Walsh. He was going to get Walsh out of the way, and he hoped he could make it look like suicide. That would delay the investigation into the transfer of money long enough for everyone to fade back into their quiet lives, knowing they had done their patriotic duty.
Katazin was thrilled at the prospect of getting his reward. Whether it was a promotion or recall back to Russia to a hero’s welcome, he was ready.
Mike Rosenberg sat in his organized office inside the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Virginia. It was more than just an office. He could close the door and be completely sealed off from the rest of the world to work in private. Any information that left his office could be monitored. But his job was to gather as much information as possible from public sources, which included the Internet, and work with other analysts to decide what that information meant and how reliable it was.
He was proud of the history of the agency. Few people recognized how significant their work had been since World War II, when they grew out of a little-known agency called the Office of Strategic Services. There were connections to the history of the marines as well, and he realized people around the office respected his former position in the Corps. An intelligence officer in a combat-ready unit was vital. Although it was popular to say that “military intelligence” was an oxymoron, Rosenberg had found that most intelligence officers worked with what they had and were able to save American military lives during combat with the information they provided.
That was his goal today. He wanted to save a former military man, his friend Derek Walsh. Luckily he could justify anything he was about to do by saying he was trying to get a better handle on the growing violence and fear in both the United States and Western Europe. That was all anyone was trying to do at the moment. The riots got worse in the evening in Europe and tended to die out in the United States.
He had spoken to his other friend from the marines, Bill Shepherd, and learned that the military base where he was stationed had seen heavy protest during the night and felt the wrath of a group of Germans that grew to over three thousand. Shepherd said it wasn’t that bad, but Rosenberg could tell by his friend’s voice that it had unnerved him and he was ready to go out on the line again tonight.
The first thing Rosenberg started to look at was the transfers from Thomas Brothers Financial. He had talked to one of the analysts connected to the FBI who had the information, and it didn’t take long to determine that the accounts the money went to in Europe were all connected. Now that he was looking at information outside the United States, things could get complicated, but that was why he liked his job.
14
Major Bill Shepherd sat in his office, staring out through the single window into the dark German sky. It was after nine o’clock, but he wasn’t sure how much after. He’d stayed at the front line of the defense of the base until the protesters finally broke up about four in the morning. It was nothing like combat, but it was still tense and kept them on edge.