Robert Tanenbaum - Counterplay

The last sentence came out as a sob. Fulton’s massive shoulders shook as he cried. Not knowing what else to do, Karp put a hand on his back. “We’ll get them all, Clay,” he gently enunciated, feeling less than adequate at coming up with the right words. “We’ll get the bastards who did it.”

Fulton nodded and straightened up. He pulled another paper towel from the rack, wet it, and wiped his face. Karp noted the dark circles under his friend’s eyes.

In all, six children, ages seven to twelve, had been on the rural school bus commandeered by the terrorists. Six dead children, one dead bus driver, plus nine dead police officers and federal agents. Ten if Grover was counted, but no one was shedding any tears for him.

“So anything new on Kane?” Fulton asked to break the ice as Karp opened the bathroom door.

The public had not been told much about Kane’s escape except that apparent Islamic terrorists had murdered children and law enforcement officers and that authorities believed these terrorists had freed Kane, who was now referred to in the press as “the criminal mastermind Andrew Kane” because of his suspected ties to arms dealers. One of the terrorists had died, and one New York police detective had been wounded and survived, but no identities were being released “at this time.”

In the meantime, the nation had been put on Red Alert as the largest manhunt in U.S. history was launched. But Kane and his accomplices had disappeared.

Meanwhile, the press was going bonkers, clamoring for more, filing Freedom of Information Act demands for whatever public records might exist, but none did-or they were deemed part of the “ongoing investigation” and therefore exempt. The media camped out on the lawns of the families grieving for their children and spoke in stage whispers for the cameras at the funerals of the murdered officers. It was a bonanza for retired generals and terrorism experts, who were trotted out by the television networks as being the final authorities on the latest casualties in the War on Terrorism.

“Maybe, I can help answer that.”

Karp and Fulton looked over at the doorway as S. P. Jaxon, the FBI’s man in charge of the New York office and an old friend of Karp’s, walked into the room followed by another man. It was the second man who’d spoken.

“Roger Karp, Clay Fulton, I’d like you to meet Jon Ellis, the assistant director of special operations with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security,” Jaxon said. “Jon, this is Mr. Roger Karp, Butch to his friends, the district attorney of New York County. And you know all about Mr. Fulton, one of New York’s finest.”

Ellis stepped forward and shook hands with Karp and Fulton. “Of course, no introductions needed,” he said. “I’m a big fan, Mr. Karp-Butch, if I may-and Mr. Fulton’s reputation with the NYPD is legendary.”

“Hi, Espey,” Karp said, shaking the FBI agent’s hand before turning to shake Ellis’s. “Special ops?” The man smiled, but Karp noticed that his eyes did not crease with any humor. Botox or that’s just the way he is, a cold fish? he wondered.

“Nothing like military special ops, Butch,” Ellis replied. “More of a catchall for all the shit-pardon my French, sir-but the shit nobody else knows what to do with. Mostly odds and ends.”

Yeah, like I believe that, Karp thought. Something tells me this guy is no odds-and-ends man.

Jon Ellis wasn’t particularly large; in fact, he was a shade under five foot ten, but from the way he moved, Karp knew there was a trained, muscular body beneath his conservative Brooks Brothers suit. Ellis’s face was tanned and his eyes gray as rain clouds; Karp knew they were assessing him and filing the information into some internal computer.

“Jon will be handling the Kane case, at least the federal side of it,” Jaxon said. “The FBI will mostly be assisting. I’ve been temporarily appointed to be the agency’s liaison with Homeland Security.”

Karp noticed the tightness in Jaxon’s voice and attributed it to the interagency power struggles the feds were known for. Silver haired, lean, and lithe as a cat, Jaxon, known to his friends simply as Espey, was no slouch himself but exuded none of the other man’s cockiness.

“We’ll do our best to cooperate,” Karp said. “Now, you were going to answer Mr. Fulton’s question about the latest on Kane?”

Ellis went over to the doorway and looked up and down the hallway before closing the door. He then picked up the television remote control from the bed stand and turned up the volume.

A bit melodramatic, Karp thought. But maybe that goes with the spook business.

“This goes no further,” Ellis warned. “I shouldn’t really be telling you, but Mr. Jaxon assures me you can be trusted absolutely and need to be in the loop. As to your question, we don’t know where Kane is at the moment, although we have reason to believe that he remains in the United States.” Ellis looked at Fulton. “However, you were right about the terrorists speaking Russian. We’ve identified the dead guy as Akhmed Kadyrov, a Chechen terrorist with ties to al Qaeda.”

“Chechen?” Fulton asked.

“Yeah, from Chechnya or, as they call it, Ichkeria, in southern Russia. He was one of these so-called Chechen nationalists who want to establish an independent state…full of patriotic anti-Russian rhetoric, but really just a collection of thugs, gangsters, and Islamic extremists. The Russians think he was behind several bombings last year in Moscow that killed a lot of civilians. He may also have been involved in the Nord-Ost musical theater takeover in Moscow, 129 people killed, as well as the school massacre in Beslan last September. They killed 341 people in that one, 172 of them children. Obviously, the world’s a better place without him. The Russian ambassador will be appearing at the White House tomorrow with the president to use this attack to blast Chechen terrorists as a worldwide threat and renew his country’s commitment to the ‘War on Terrorism,’ whatever that means.”

“What have these guys got to do with Kane?” Karp asked.

“Good question. But as you know,” Ellis pointed out, “we suspect that one of Kane’s ‘extracurricular’ businesses, while maintaining the public persona, was arms dealing-much of it supplying terrorist organizations and various insurgencies with everything from rifles to shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. Your guy, Newbury…who, by the way, is very, very good, we’d like to steal him away-”

“He’s spoken for,” Karp said with an equally false smile while thinking, This guy certainly likes to work the crowd.

“Ah, the jealous boyfriend.” Ellis laughed. “But I’ll leave it for the moment. Anyway, your guy Newbury has also uncovered some paper trails indicating Kane was sort of a one-stop supermarket for terrorists…weapons, maybe even working on acquiring WMD…and banking. He apparently had connections and accounts at a number of U.S. and offshore banks and was transferring, laundering, and funneling large amounts of cash from a variety of sources including, get this, the Little Sisters of Islam Home for War Orphans…. Hey, who says these guys have no sense of humor?”

“With Newbury’s help, we’ve frozen a lot of Kane’s assets,” Jaxon added. “I doubt we have them all, but it had to hurt.”

“There are other arms dealers and crooked bankers,” Karp said. “Why go through all the trouble-including murdering kids, which they knew was going to bring the heat in spades-for this one guy?”

Ellis shrugged. “What can I say? He’s got something they want. We do know that they sent one of their top field operatives to get him.”

“Don’t tell me,” Fulton said. “The girl.”

Ellis snorted in disgust. “Some girl. She goes by Samira Azzam, though we don’t think that’s her real name. More of a political statement-the ‘real’ Samira Azzam was a Palestinian poet who was vehemently anti-Israeli way back when it all started in the forties.”