Джеймс Паттерсон - Killer Instinct

Which, over the span of two rectangular blackboards, brought everything full circle. The Mudir and Darvish were somehow connected, courtesy of Alexandrov. Unfortunately, out of those three, two of them were dead.

So was a young man named Gorgin, as well as the guy with a pointed beard who killed him when it became clear that Gorgin was going to help Elizabeth. Gorgin, whoever he was, saved Elizabeth’s life.

Now, with a little luck, he would end up saving the lives of countless others. That was why, at three in the morning, we were all still up and waiting.

The speakerphone on the conference room table suddenly crackled with the sound of Julian’s voice. “Found it!” he said.

The waiting was over.

Chapter 81

HOURS EARLIER, Chase Bank had provided us with the security footage from its branch at Penn Station. Matching up the time stamp from the ATM withdrawal slip Elizabeth had taken from the shirt pocket of the guy in Gorgin’s house with the pointed beard, we were able to see him enter and leave the branch.

What we weren’t able to see—or learn—was his name. According to Chase, the account he withdrew money from belonged to a Priscilla H. McManus. Miss McManus had reported her card stolen one day after making an ATM withdrawal from a branch in Jersey City.

Suffice it to say, larceny was probably the very least of our guy’s sins.

“So where did he go after the bank?” asked Foxx. “Did he catch a train? Was he meeting someone?”

Foxx was the only one in the room who had just learned of Elizabeth having the ATM receipt. We all turned to him. Damn. Good question.

There were a lot of sharp minds around the table, and we’d all been focused on who this guy was, not what else he might have been doing besides getting cash. Psychologists like to call that tunnel vision. I just call it a brain fart. Happens to the best of us.

Julian to the rescue.

We could’ve woken up the head of the Manhattan Transportation Authority, who, in turn, could’ve woken up his head of security, who then could’ve woken up whoever it was whose job entailed archiving all their daily surveillance footage on some MTA server. Even then, it would’ve taken hours. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

We didn’t have hours. But we did have Julian.

“Give me a moment. I’m synching up all the timecodes,” he said over the speakerphone. “How many monitors do you have?”

We all started looking around the room, but Pritchard already knew the count. He undoubtedly spent more time at the JTTF offices than anywhere else, including that crazy Operation Desert Storm townhouse of his.

“Seven monitors,” said Pritchard, reaching over to a control panel built into the table. With the press of a few buttons the screens all lit up, flashing blue with the FBI logo. “Tell me when you want our password.”

Julian chuckled. Which made me chuckle. Pritchard clearly didn’t have a full grasp of Julian’s hacking talents. A password? Who needs a password?

Not Julian. Not ever. Within seconds, all seven monitors were filled with different camera angles of Penn Station. Julian had assigned a letter to each piece of footage next to its timecode.

“Okay, here’s before he went to the ATM,” said Julian. “The first up, A, is him entering the main entrance, western end of 32nd Street.”

Like a play-by-play announcer calling a football game, Julian circled the guy with a telestrator. The man with the pointed beard was walking alone into Penn Station dressed in a pair of jeans and a zip-up hoodie. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder.

Our eyes darted to another monitor as Julian circled the guy again, moving through the main concourse. Then once more, heading toward the entrance of the Chase branch. A to B to C.

That was it. No detours. A direct path to the ATM machine.

“Anyone see anything out of the ordinary?” asked Pritchard. We all shook our heads. Pritchard nodded. “Yeah, I don’t either.”

“Okay, let’s take a look at afterward,” said Julian.

A new set of images appeared. Same angles. Just a couple of minutes later. Julian resumed telestrating the guy as he left the bank, as well as when he began walking back across the concourse to where he’d entered. Instinctively, we all turned to the next monitor, expecting to see the guy leaving the station.

“Wait. Where did he go?” asked Foxx.

We all leaned forward.

Good question.

There was no one for Julian to circle. The guy wasn’t on the next monitor or any others. We whipped our heads around the room, looking at every screen once, then twice.

“Are you sure all the footage is synched?” I asked.

Of course Julian was sure, but he double-checked anyway. “Yep. All the timecodes match,” he said. I could hear him pouring himself some more whiskey. “Occam’s razor?”

“Yeah, probably a blind spot,” I said. In other words, that was the easiest and simplest explanation. Except there was one thing Occam’s razor wouldn’t explain. Julian knew it, too.

“Let me fast-forward,” he said. “All eyes on the exits.”

Julian sped up the footage. There was no way the cameras could cover every square foot of Penn Station. But there was also no way any of the exits could be among the blind spots.

“There!” said Elizabeth, bolting up from her chair. She headed straight to one of the monitors, pointing. “By the Hudson newsstand.”

“That’s him, all right,” said Julian.

Suddenly, our guy with the pointed beard was back in frame and heading for the exit in his jeans, zip-up hoodie, and—

Oh, shit.

“Does everyone see what I’m not seeing?” I asked.

Chapter 82

WE IMMEDIATELY woke up the head of the Manhattan Transportation Authority, who, in turn, woke up his head of security, who then woke up whoever it was whose job entailed archiving all their daily surveillance footage on some MTA server. But not because we needed the footage. We already had that. We needed to know the areas of Penn Station the security cameras didn’t cover. Immediately.

The backpack was missing.

Within an hour, a small army descended upon the station. Over fifty officers from the NYPD were called in to seal the perimeter. It was hardly rush hour at just past four in the morning, but there were going to be news vans for sure. If the busiest transportation facility in the country was about to be evacuated, it didn’t matter what the hell time it was. The press would be there.

“Keep ’em outside,” said Pritchard. “Them and anyone else. No one gets in.”

The press would be told it was a bomb scare. Even if they weren’t told, they’d ultimately see the arrival of the bomb squad. There was no hiding it. There was also no reason to. Staying far away from the building was for their safety, and they would have no argument.

But as I heard Pritchard bark that order down the chain of command, I had a feeling he and I were both thinking the same thing. There was definitely an argument coming, only it was going to be among ourselves. I could smell it. As sure as every bomb-sniffing dog that had been brought into the station.

“They’re not all Vapor Wakes, are they?” my father asked as soon as a dozen of the dogs were led in.

“No, only half of them are,” the chief handler answered. “That’s what I figured made sense when I got the call.”

My father nodded his approval. Years before Diamond, his cherished vizsla, was one of the world’s best hunting dogs, he was one of the world’s best bomb sniffers, deployed with US Special Forces in Afghanistan. After my father inherited Diamond, however, training for a majority of bomb dogs changed. This new breed was called Vapor Wake because they were trained to detect scents in motion, as in a moving suitcase in an airport terminal or a suicide bomber weaving through a crowd. In the modern age of terrorism, the change seemed like a necessity.