Sam Bourne: The Final Reckoning

© 2008

My pen has hovered over these pages many times. I have wanted so badly to set down my story here – but I have hesitated. Each time I begin a sentence only to pull back. Even now the pen is heavy in my hand.

But there is not much time, I see that now. I understand that if I were to leave these pages blank, all that I have witnessed would be forgotten. Our story would be lost forever.

So forgive me if what you read here is harsh, if it haunts you the way it haunts me. But there will be no exaggeration, no lies. I may not tell everything, but what I will tell will be the truth. This is what happened. Some of it you know already. Some of it you don't. It is my story now, but soon it will be yours.

The day that changes a life, or ends a life, rarely comes with a warning. There are no signs in the sky, no dark ravens on a post, no soundtrack in a minor key. To Felipe Tavares, security officer at the United Nations building in New York, September 23 had started as a regular Monday.

He had come in on the Long Island Expressway on the 6.15 train, picked up a cappuccino and a muffin – a skinny blueberry one, in a concession to his wife – waved his permit at the guys on the door and headed to the basement of the United Nations building, headquarters of the institution he had served for the previous three years. There he opened up his locker, pulled out the blue uniform of an officer of the UN Security Force, complete with the Sam Browne belt and the brass badge that still triggered a charge of pride, and dressed for his shift.

Next, he went to the armoury to pick up his weapon. He handed over his smartcard photo ID, taking in return a 9mm Glock, standard issue for most serving members of this miniature police force, charged with protecting the international territory that was the UN compound and everything within it. Felipe took the ammunition from the pouch on his belt and loaded up, carefully pointing the weapon into the loading barrel to guard against any misfires. Once his gun was holstered on his belt, alongside his truncheon, a P38 baton with handle, pepper spray and cuffs, he headed for the basement's ‘ready room’. There he would stand in his place for the line-up, where he and his fellow guards would be reviewed by an officer, checking to make sure his men and women were tidy, sober and fit for duty.

That done, he headed back to the main entrance on First Avenue between 45th and 46th Streets to begin what he assumed would be another long day checking permits and answering tourists' questions. It was warm enough, but rain was in the air; he put on his orange-and-black waterproof cape. The work would be boring, but he did not care. Felipe Tavares had yearned to escape from the drudgery of small-town Portugal where he had been born and grown up, and where, if he had not moved fast, he would have died – and he had made it. He was in New York City and that alone was excitement enough.

At that same moment, across town in a Tribeca side street that was no more than an alley, Marcus Mack conducted his own morning routine. African-American and in his late twenties, wearing loose, frayed jeans, with a full head of dreadlocks and with a grungy Crumpler computer bag slung across his shoulder, he checked on his parked car. Anyone watching would have assumed he was merely proud of his souped-up, if aged, Pontiac and that when he knelt down by the driver's side rear wheel he was checking the tyre pressure. They probably wouldn't have seen him feeling in the well above the wheel and finding, stuck there with duct tape, a cellphone. He took it and walked on.

Perhaps a minute later the phone rang, as Marcus knew it would. The voice that spoke was familiar but Marcus knew better than to say hello. It said four words – ‘Athens coffee shop, seven-thirty’ – then hung up. At the corner of the street, and without ceremony, Mack dropped the telephone into a garbage can.

The café was full, the way his handler liked it. Marcus spotted him instantly, on a stool in the window, just another grey-suit reading his newspaper. Marcus took the seat next to him and pulled out his laptop. They made no eye contact.

The handler's phone rang and he pretended to answer it. In fact, he was speaking to Marcus, whose eyes remained fixed on the computer screen in front of him.

‘We've picked up activity in Brighton Beach. The Russian.’

He did not have to say any more. Marcus knew about the Russian, as did the other member of his unit in the NYPD Intelligence Division. The Russian was an arms supplier who had been spotted a year ago. The Division had enough to shut him down immediately but the order had come from on high: ‘Keep him in play.’ It was a familiar tactic. Leave a bad guy in business, watch who comes and goes and hope he leads you to some worse guys. Throw back the minnow, catch the shark.

‘Surveillance camera caught a man in black entering the Russian's place last night, leaving an hour later. Traced him to the Tudor Hotel, 42nd and Second.’

Marcus did not react, just kept tapping away at his keyboard, for all the world an urban guy reshuffling his iTunes collection. But he knew what the location meant. The Tudor was perhaps the nearest hotel to the United Nations building. And this was the UN's big week. Heads of government from all over the world had piled into New York to address the General Assembly. US Secret Service were crawling all over the place in preparation for the President's visit later in the week, but there were more than a hundred other prize targets already here, all jammed within a few Manhattan blocks for seventy-two fraught hours. In a week like this, anything was possible. A Kurd bent on assassinating the head of the Turkish government, a Basque separatist determined to blast the Spanish prime minister, ideally on live television: you name it.

‘Placed a tap on the Tudor Hotel switchboard last night. Recorded a guest calling down to reception this morning, asking about visiting times to the UN. “Is it true tourists can go right into the Security Council chamber itself?”’

‘Accent?’ It was the first word Marcus had spoken.

‘Part British, part “foreign”.’

‘OK’

‘You need to get down there. Watch and follow.’

‘Description?’

‘White male. Five-eight. Heavy black coat, black woollen hat.’

‘Weight?’

‘Hard to tell. Coat's bulky.’

‘Back-up?’

‘There's a team.’

Felipe Tavares was now outdoors. Behind him was the temporary white marquee that served as the UN visitors' lobby – still up after five years. Not much tourist traffic yet, too early. So far it was just regular UN staff, permits dangling like necklaces. Not much for him to do. He looked up at the sky, now darkening. Rain was coming.

Marcus stationed himself on the corner of 42nd and Second Avenue – still called Nelson and Winnie Mandela Corner – tucked into the doorway of McFadden's Bar. Diagonally opposite was the Tudor Hotel. The first drops of rain were a help; the shelter gave him an excuse to be standing there, doing nothing. And it meant the Tudor's doorman, in cape and peaked cap, was too busy fussing with umbrellas and cab doors to notice a shifty guy in dreads across the street.

That was how Marcus liked it; to be unnoticed. It had become a speciality of his back when he was doing undercover work in the NYPD's narcotics squad. Since he had moved over to the Intel Division a year ago it had become a necessity. The thousand men and women of what amounted to New York's very own spy agency, a legacy of 9/11, kept themselves secret from everyone: the public, the bad guys, even their fellow cops.