Robert Tanenbaum - Bad Faith

It had disappointed her to learn that Karp’s family would not be on the float with him, though it had not surprised her due to her own warnings about the terrorist threat. But the warnings had been necessary. The most difficult part of her plan had been to lure Grale and his men out of their lair. The traitor had told her that there was no way she could simply storm his stronghold, even if she could find it. He and his people knew the subterranean world and were masters at fighting in the dark. “And if he knows you’re coming with too great a force to fight,” the traitor had said, “he’ll just take Kane and melt away into the dark.”

She needed to know how to find Grale’s home and Kane, and she needed Grale to be out of it, which is where her attorney Bruce Knight came in. The traitor had told her that Knight had once lived with Grale and still helped with legal issues for his motley collection of Mole People. That meant he could contact Grale and would be trusted. She gambled that Knight could also be trusted to reveal what she was saying and doing to his old friend. So much for attorney-client privilege , she thought with a laugh.

Of all the potential pitfalls in her plan, Grale worried her the most. He answered to no one but himself and by all accounts was insane, which meant he might not react in a predictable way. So she’d come up with several traps to get him out from beneath the streets. The first was to offer herself as bait. She knew from the traitor that Grale felt he was on some sort of mission from God to rid Manhattan of evil. “He believes that you are inhabited by a very important demon,” the traitor had told her. “If he thought he could get to you and kill you, he’d take any chance.”

So she let it be known to Knight that she would be at the Halloween parade with very little protection. He would also try to stop a terrorist attack, seeing himself as a force for good, and therefore she made sure that Knight knew enough about the evening’s plans to warn Grale.

She wasn’t as sure about Grale’s feelings about Karp. On the surface, they were enemies-Grale was a mass murderer and Karp was a by-the-book prosecutor. The traitor had warned that there was some sort of personal connection between Grale and Karp’s family, but whether that extended to the man himself, he wasn’t so sure. So she also came up with the idea of planting the seed that Karp worked for the Sons of Man, not such a far-fetched idea for a madman. It had paid off when Rolles brought her the newspaper with the front-page story about Grale’s attack on Karp.

Malovo looked around, wondering if any of the costumed revelers around her were actually an insane killer and his minions. It would be so easy to sidle up to her, just as, according to her plan, it would be so easy for a group of terrorists to join the parade with no one the wiser until the bombs started going off.

Looking across Sixth Avenue, Malovo scanned the crowd to pick out Agent Jaxon and U.S. Marshal Capers. She’d suggested that they stand apart from her as they kept an eye on the marchers and told them it would be easier to spot the terrorists on the parade route than next to her on a crowded sidewalk. She expected Capers to resist the notion of being so far away, but other than insisting that Malovo be cuffed and within arm’s reach of Rolles, she agreed.

During a break between groups on the parade route, Malovo spotted the pair. Capers was dressed as a clown in whiteface and wearing a short, bright yellow high school marching band dress and a cowboy hat. Jaxon was dressed as a cowboy, complete with a six-shooter that Malovo knew was not just a prop.

Suddenly, Jaxon’s hand flew to his ear, while on his side of the street, Rolles did the same thing. A moment later Rolles turned toward her and grinned. “They caught Grale,” he said. “Apparently he got within about twenty feet of Karp’s float before Fulton spotted him. And get this, he was dressed like a monk and almost made it through the security line.”

Malovo laughed. Then Rolles put a finger to his lips and listened to his earpiece again, and again started to smile. “Just like a row of dominoes,” he said. “I’m afraid yet another terrorist cell has been taken down.”

This time Malovo nodded. She knew the second report was from Jaxon’s antiterrorism team. The next phase was complete. Two blocks away, two sleeper cells of terrorists who’d been helping each other into suicide vests were in the custody of federal agents.

“It’s done,” Rolles said, looking down at her. “They will relax their guard now.”

“Time for the next phase,” Malovo said.

Rolles nodded and pulled a cell phone from his pocket. He pressed a number and then spoke into the receiver. “Move.”

Suddenly, from a side street just up the block, a new group of marchers broke through the throng and the police barricade to join the parade. The group consisted of a dozen young women dressed identically to Malovo as Little Red Riding Hoods and a half-dozen men dressed as wolves like Rolles. The crowd laughed and cheered as the wolves chased the red-caped women toward Malovo and Rolles.

Malovo glanced back across the street and saw Capers frown, then suddenly realize what was happening and start trying to push her way through the crowd. Jaxon followed, drawing his gun.

It was too late. The Red Riding Hoods, who were just young women hired to play the part, surrounded Malovo and Rolles. “Let’s go,” he said to her, and started to move with the crowd.

She smiled. This was the part of the plan she had not told him about. One of the wolves stepped up to her, cut the plastic wrist cuffs, and handed the knife he’d used to Malovo. It all happened so fast that Rolles did not have time to react before the blade cut through his stomach muscles and pierced his liver. She twisted the knife for both effect and pleasure, and then stabbed him twice more before he could reach out to push her away.

“Bitch,” he snarled as he started to crumple to the ground.

“The better to kill you, my dear,” she laughed, and then bent over and took the cell phone from his hand. She stood and looked at the wolf who had handed her the knife. “Allahu akbar!” she shouted, giving him the cell phone.

“Allahu akbar!” he shouted back, and with the other wolves began to run toward the back of the parade route, where the grand marshal’s float was just beginning its journey.

Even those around Malovo did not realize what had happened as she danced off in the middle of the group of other Red Riding Hoods. Not until a pool of blood began to spread around the twitching body of Michael Rolles did anyone scream.

And by the time Capers and Jaxon reached the spot, Malovo was long gone.

Standing on top of the float, Karp saw them coming from two blocks away. A half-dozen figures dressed in gray fur with black noses and floppy ears running with purpose against the flow of the parade. Even at a distance he could tell that they moved like men weighed down by a heavy burden.

It was seeing their costumes, though, that had reminded him of one of the offhand comments made by the terrorists in the house with Nadya Malovo: “We will be like wolves among the sheep.” And that’s when he knew the identity of the men who’d been sent to kill him and many others.

The comment might have passed him by, but his daughter’s discussion about how people sounded different when speaking naturally as opposed to reading had heightened his consciousness about speech patterns. Without knowing why it mattered, he noticed how Malovo’s voice had caught when the man spoke before she recovered and tried to hide the slipup.

Now he knew what had been in the boxes that Jaxon’s men had discovered at the Bed-Stuy house that afternoon. They had found the boxes when they took the terrorists into custody, but they’d been empty, and it wasn’t until the agents discovered an old tunnel below the apartment building that had once been used to transport heating coal beneath the streets that they realized that one group of the terrorists had escaped with their costumes. The others who stayed back were just unwitting decoys, though murderous in their own right.