He had refused to go to his doctor’s office in Greenwich Village today, insisting his specialist deliver the news by phone. After weeks of tests, scans and second opinions, Morrow had braced for this call.
“Frank, it’s Art.”
“Should I enhance my pension plan or review my will?”
“I wish I had better news. It’s worse than we’d feared.”
“Is it treatable?”
“Chemo is a long-shot option. You’d have to stop working, and the odds chemo will have any impact are two to three percent, at best.”
“Is there any other option?”
“No.”
“So I’m terminal?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Frank, we can’t be sure.”
“How long, Art?”
“A year, maybe sixteen months.”
Morrow’s knuckles whitened as he squeezed his phone.
Silence fell between him and Art Stein, a Johns Hopkins grad who’d interned at Sloan-Kettering. Stein had an excellent bedside manner that he’d taken courtside over the last few months, after agreeing to give Morrow most of his updates during Knicks games at the Garden.
Now, to fill the growing quiet, Stein reached for medical jargon, explaining again about cells, hematology and the stages Morrow faced with this rare form of cancer.
Morrow was no longer listening.
Maybe it was Morrow’s private philosophy, forged by his line of work, but for him, death was always near. A view made manifest by the fact that the FBI’s New York office was a few blocks from Ground Zero.
As Stein went on, Morrow looked out at Lower Manhattan’s skyline and was pulled back to that day, thinking how one moment you are living your life, then fate slams into you the way the planes slammed into the towers.
On that morning, Morrow actually saw the Boeing 767 that was American Airlines flight 11 streak by his twenty-eighth-floor window before it knifed into the North Tower. Within minutes, the New York Division led the investigation. Morrow was immersed in it as the FBI and a spectrum of agencies chased leads, examined the wreckage and collected evidence at Fresh Kills.
Everybody had lost someone in the attacks.
Moments of that morning haunted him.
“Frank?” Stein repeated. “Frank, are you with me? To answer your question—” I asked a question? “—there won’t be any physical pain. Breathing could cease in your sleep. Frank?”
Morrow searched for words worth using.
“I’m lucky, Art.”
“Lucky?” Stein paused. “Frank, do you want me to put you in touch with a shrink, to talk things over?”
Morrow found Elizabeth’s and Hailey’s faces in the framed photographs next to his computer monitor. He smiled to himself.
He was damn lucky. Unlike the people who died in the attacks. To Morrow they were heroes. Especially the jumpers he’d seen.
They had no choice. They had no time.
Morrow was lucky because he had time to get ready.
“Frank? Do you want me to set it up?”
“No, I don’t think I’ll need that now. I’ll just chew this over for a while, you know?”
“I understand. Call me anytime. Hey, I got Lakers tickets. Are you in?”
“I’m in.”
Morrow hung up.
Telling Elizabeth and their daughter, Hailey, would be the hardest thing he’d ever have to do. Elizabeth knew nothing about this. He’d kept it to himself for the last three months. That’s when he started getting a few stomach cramps in his sleep, his skin started itching, his piss and crap turned weird colors and he’d lost a bit of weight. He told her he’d cut out the fries at work and used the stairs more.
“That’s good.” Elizabeth smiled, but her eyes held a degree of suspicion.
Of course, he was a bastard for not telling her and she’d have every right to kill him. But she’d lost her mother last year and he was not going to put more worry on her if there was a chance it was nothing.
All that changed now.
In the back of his mind, Morrow had figured that his number had come up. Somehow he just knew. He was grateful for the good life he’d had, for the time he had left. What tore him up was that it was going to be hard on Elizabeth and Hailey.
At least we have time to prepare.
He’d talk to his boss, get some time off. Maybe drive along the coast with Elizabeth and Hailey, watch the ocean and talk.
Burial or cremation?
He didn’t have to decide today.
One thing was certain: he was not going to curl up. To hell with chemo. As long as he could do the job, he would do the job. He’d seize control of every minute he had left. He was not going to eat his gun, or fall in front of a subway train.
Frank Morrow would rage against his impending death.
“Frank—” Agent Rutto rushed by his doorway “—meeting in the boardroom, now!”
About thirty people had gathered quickly around the room’s huge cherry-wood table, the venetian blinds opened to a view of the Brooklyn Bridge. Assistant Special Agent in Charge Glenda Stark had called the briefing and, in typical Stark style, cut to the point.
“Listen up, people. We’ve just received confirmation of four homicides in the robbery of an armored courier, American Centurion, which was servicing ATMs at the Freedom Freeway Service Center at Ramapo.”
Stark surveyed the room over her bifocals. She had everyone’s attention.
“Three of the victims were Centurion guards. The fourth—” Stark cleared her throat. “The fourth is Special Agent Gregory Scott Dutton, with our Bridgeport office.”
Cursing rippled round the room.
“According to preliminary witness accounts, Ramapo P.D. indicates this was a highly organized hit. Dutton was among the hostages and was going for his weapon when he was killed.”
Reaction in the room rose. Stark shut it down.
“This one is ours. ERT is en route. Ramapo, Rockland Sheriff and New York State are on scene. We’re pulling from New Jersey, Hudson Valley and New Rochelle RAs. And Connecticut is sending agents. I want as many of our people to get up there now to interview witnesses. NHQ has been briefed and the director says this is a priority. Agent Morrow?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the case agent. That’s it. Let’s move, people.”
4
New York City
The man in the town house apartment was going to kill his neighbor.
The NYPD had sealed his street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, near Stuyvesant Town. News crews had gathered at the east and west cordons. Jack Gannon watched from the east end of the block as a hostage negotiator tried talking the man down.
Gannon, a reporter with the World Press Alliance news service, was with Angelo Dixon, a WPA photographer. Dixon had been using the earpiece on his portable scanner to monitor NYPD radio dispatches.
So far, Gannon knew that the suspect, Sylvester Jerome Nada, was an unemployed carpenter facing eviction, divorce and a mountain of debt. He’d claimed his neighbor, Gustav Trodder, had stolen his antique pistol, which had once belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte. Nada had taken Trodder hostage with his semiautomatic Smith & Wesson, vowing to “blow his freakin’ head off.”
Nothing was happening.
This standoff is going to turn out to be a supreme waste of time.
Gannon had been here nearly two hours and his gut told him the real story was the tip he’d been working on back in the newsroom.
It came in last week, a call about an impending threat.
“It involves an operation, a mission, an attack on America,” the caller had said.