Michael Ledwidge: Alert

What the hell is this place? I thought groggily. A crash hangout for a janitor?

There was a strong musty smell in the air, which could only mean a basement. It comforted me somehow as I lay there. It was a happy smell. Suburban families, popcorn and videos on sleepovers, board games on a rainy day.

Those visions imploded as I heard the horrendous screams start in the distance. There were three in a row. Three impassioned shrieks of someone in hysterical, unholy pain.

Get out now! I told myself. But as I jumped up, it was like my feet had been pulled out from underneath me. I smacked the left side of my face pretty good on the concrete. What the hell? I thought. Then I looked down and felt like letting out some unholy screams myself as my mind kicked straight into adrenaline-pumping animal panic.

My left leg was handcuffed to an old galvanized steel heating pipe that was embedded in the concrete floor.

The door shot open. One of the ski-masked guys walked in. He had his jacket off and was wearing a black long-sleeved T-shirt. Behind him came a second ski-masked guy wearing an army-green long-sleeved T-shirt, dragging something heavy.

He was dragging Yevdokimov, I realized a moment later. The Russian was naked and very dead. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone more dead. His face and arms and chest looked like they’d been worked on by a very motivated demolition crew. There didn’t seem to be a part of him that wasn’t black or blue or covered in blood.

The second guy walked over and, with a squeak, wheeled off a huge sheet of plastic over the couch. He slit the plastic off the roll with a box cutter that he pulled from his pocket, then the two of them lifted Yevdokimov up and tossed him onto the plastic-covered couch, wrapping him up like the largest, sorriest fish in the history of the world.

They taped the ends with a roll of duct tape they produced from beneath the couch, and when they were done they lifted him up like a rug and dropped him on the floor. The black-shirted guy sat down on the couch and put his feet on Yevdokimov like he was an ottoman. Then his buddy joined him.

Robertson was right, I saw as they peeled off their ski masks. It was Vladislav and Oleg Filipov.

I’ll have to congratulate Robertson, I thought. If I ever see him again.

Father and son Filipov sat there staring at me with their pale, sharp, nasty-looking faces and their feet up on Yevdokimov, not saying anything. Staring back, I’d never been so afraid in my life. My heart beat against my chest like that of a rat trapped in a corner, and when I swallowed, I realized that I didn’t have any saliva in my mouth.

The older guy started laughing.

“And how are you?” he said in a deep Russian accent as he laboriously stood up. “Here. I have something for you.”

The old man took something out of his black cargo-pants pocket. It was a two-foot piece of flex pipe with a sharp-looking fist-size chunk of metal on the end of it. The metal part was a heavy brass hose bibb, I realized as he came forward and whipped me over the top of the head with the metal flail.

As I sat up, I felt a trickle of blood drip down from my scalp, a warm rivulet that fell over my forehead, along the side of my nose, over my closed lips, and off my chin. “Do you like my cop-be-good stick?” he said as I sat there in agony. “It’s the whipping action of the flex pipe that really delivers the groceries. I also love the way it smashes and cuts at the same time. All without putting too much strain on my wrist. I’m older and must consider such things. You will cooperate with us now.”

I glanced into my tormentor’s cold brown eyes as my skull throbbed.

“So here we are,” said the cruel prick as he sat down and crossed his legs on Yevdokimov’s body. “You wished to find us, yes, Mr. NYPD? Well, be careful what you wish for.”

“Aren’t you going to ask us who we are?” said the younger guy — the one in the green T-shirt — who, unsurprisingly, had a Russian accent as well.

“You’re the bombers. The terrorists,” I finally said with slow deliberation as I continued to bleed. With the drugs and the pain and the fear, it wasn’t easy to keep my voice steady.

“We are the bombers. This is true,” said the old man. “But we’re not terrorists.”

“No. More like pissed-off citizens, you could call us,” said the younger Russian, cutting in. “What’s the word? Disgruntled — that’s it. Call us disgruntled immigrants.”

“But enough about us,” said the old man, slapping the flail into a palm. “Let’s see what you know, okay? Question one.”

He lifted his booted foot over Yevdokimov and brought it down hard.

“Do you know why we killed this piece of shit?”

“The ransom,” I said carefully. “He found your video and tried to make money off it.”

The old pig looked surprised. “That’s right. Yevdokimov and I were associates. We actually used to work together in the KGB a lifetime ago. I contracted out a job for him, but he made a mistake. He tried to turn the tables.

“Now,” the old man said, stomping the body again with his combat boot, “Yev is my table.”

“When you were in the KGB, you worked with Rezende’s uncle,” I said, putting the pieces together. “In Cape Verde, to overthrow the Portuguese.”

“You know a little history, I see,” the old man said. “Which is saying a lot for an American. That’s exactly where I met Paulo Rezende and his tool of a nephew, Armenio. Paulo was there when I came up with the tsunami project back in 1971.”

Now I was confused.

“Yes. Surprising, isn’t it? This plan has been in the pipeline since before you were born, cop. The bureau called it Krasnyy Navodneniye.”

He smiled.

“Operation Red Flood,” he said.

“It started out as a lark, really,” the old man continued. “One night, Paulo and I came back from a bombing run and were listening to the BBC news. A story about the latest volcanic threat on Árvore Preta and a geologist who speculated that one piece falling off the volcano might be a titanic tsunami threat to the United States.

“That got me thinking. Why not just get some dynamite and give that cliff a push? I put it over the wire back to the big boys in Moscow, and they just ate it up. A month later, they sent out a team of engineers and surveyors who concluded that it could be done. They commissioned and typed up a plan for exactly how to do it, down to the last detail. I actually got a promotion for think-tanking that attack. And why not? It was genius.”

“Why didn’t they do it?”

“They were thinking about it in late 1980, I heard. There was some seismic activity, so they were going to make it look like an accident, but then Reagan got elected, and they thought if the truth ever came out, he was just crazy enough to let the nukes fly.”

“Why now, then?” I said. “Why destroy New York now? Does Russia want to bring back the glory days and start World War Three?”

“No,” said the old man. “We have no political agenda. I gave up all that political shit years ago. I’ve been a good honest crook for the last twenty years.”

He looked over at the younger Russian.

“I did it for my son here,” said the old man, patting the other guy on the back. “For him and for my grandson.”

“Your grandson?” I said, panicking, thinking there was still another nut out there we hadn’t found yet.

“My son, Mikhail,” the younger Russian said, staring almost sadly at me. “We did it for Mikhail.”

The younger Russian took a photo out of his wallet and walked over and crouched beside me.