An Armageddon Duology (4 page)

S
avas and Cohen
stepped out of the Crown Victoria in front of 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan. A towering glass skyscraper rose into the sky before them. Known as the Goldman Sachs Tower, the new forty-four story structure gleamed in the morning sun as it looked down from the northernmost end of Battery Park toward the World Financial Center. Savas could almost feel the power radiating from the monolith.

He closed the door and stared upward. "No logo. Not a letter or word on it. World's most influential financial institution, and it's basically anonymous."

Cohen stepped beside him. "It is kind of eerie, that's for sure. But I'll take it over yesterday's carnage, thank you. Forensics was picking things up with tweezers. I've had enough bombings for one lifetime."

"Hits too close to home." He turned to look behind them. "Look at those playing fields. Still brand new. This whole area was rubble and soot."

Cohen looped her hand under his arm. "It's hard to take, I know."

"Thanos died a few blocks from here. A lot of people did. Sometimes I think they should have left it like that. Broken. Raw." Kids squealed as they kicked a soccer ball across the field. "World moves on, and somehow we're all supposed to be okay with that."

"John, here they come."

Representatives from the bank rushed out to greet them. Two men and a woman, they wore appropriately moderate smiles for an occasion that consisted of their CEO having been blown up the day before, ushering them politely inside. Savas paused momentarily as they entered the lobby.

“That’s impressive.”

It was spectacularly cavernous, the ceiling higher than an opera house, works of modern art draped thirty feet in the air above them. It reminded him of standing in some of the newer airport terminals, only that everything was fashioned at several notches above the quality required for mass transportation hubs.

The woman nodded. “We’re very proud of our new building and contributions to the revitalized financial center,” she began, the delivery so perfect it seemed long rehearsed. “There are twenty-one million square feet and six trading floors, each larger than a football field. It’s a very environmentally friendly building with floor ventilation, cooled by a hundred storage tanks containing nearly two million pounds of ice. Views of the Hudson River and New York Harbor are available for our most senior members.”

“Like CEO Craig,” said Savas.

The woman’s faced paled. “Yes. Please, follow me.”

The building spanned two city blocks, and to Savas it felt like the walk to the elevator took them across the length of it. No one followed them inside, and the three Goldman employees were silent as the elevator sped upwards and stopped on the eleventh floor. Stepping out, they found themselves in a second, less gargantuan lobby, which required yet another trek to a second bank of elevators. Windows covered the walls and portions of the ceiling, bathing their path in light.

They passed the second bank of elevators and stopped in front of a doorway. The woman swiped a card over a reader and then keyed in a passcode. The door opened, revealing a short corridor to a smaller, lone elevator door.

“For our top executives,” she began as the elevator opened, “we have implemented enhanced privacy and security protocols. This elevator leads to the offices of the CEO and other top Goldman Sachs staff.” Her eyes darted away. “Unfortunately, we do not control the security outside of Goldman.”

Savas could see pain in the woman’s face. “You seem to have known Jack Craig well, Ms.?”

“Greenwald. Susan Greenwald. Yes, I was his personal administrator. His right-hand woman, you might say. Geoffrey and Kendall here are my assistants.” She nodded toward the two men. “As we discussed on the phone, you will be meeting with our interim CEO Donald Freiheit.”

The elevator doors opened. Before them an expansive conference room ran across the floor, centered on an enormous table of cherry wood. A man at the end of a polished, wooden table rose and ambled over in their direction.

Susan Greenwald reached over and tugged on Savas’ jacket, whispering to him. “I don’t care what you hear about us in the press, but Jack was a good man. He’s done more for this country, for this city than anyone I know. Find his killer.” With that she turned on her sharp heels and entered the elevator, the doors closing quickly as she vanished from view.

“Agents Savas and Cohen,” came the voice of Donald Freiheit. “Two names that need no introduction.”

Freiheit shook their hands, an expression of genuine interest on his face. He was a short man, bordering on stout, with thick glasses and a mass of gray and black curls that gave him more the look of an elder artist at a poetry slam than a new CEO. He led them to the table and poured water for each, sitting next to them like a professor before two students at office hours.

“We’ve had several rounds with the NYPD and FBI since yesterday. All of Jack's scheduling data, emails, phone logs—they're now in your hands one way or the other, either from us or your national databases. I’m not sure what else I can tell you, but I'm honored by the visit.”

Savas nodded to Cohen and she got immediately to the point, removing several photographs from her briefcase and placing them before Freiheit. “Surveillance footage from a handful of operating CCTV cameras identified some very unusual elements in the bombing.”

Freiheit glanced at the images. They were grainy, the black limo blurred in the still shot, even the street signs hard to read at the resolution afforded. However, his eyes immediately gravitated to the anomalies she referred to.

“What is this black thing on the top of the car?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out, Mr. Freiheit,” she said. “Look at this image, taken from another camera closer to the exit ramp from FDR Drive.”

“It looks like some giant bird or something. What’s it doing?”

Cohen shook her head. “We don’t know, and we were hoping that you might could shed some light on it.”

The CEO adjusted his glasses. “Me? How?”

Savas bent forward motioning between the images. “Between the time when the vehicle containing Mr. Craig took the exit ramp and the time the bomb exploded, something descended onto the roof of the car. Our analysts are still conferring with the military, but our best hypothesis is that we’re looking at some sort of remotely piloted aircraft, an unmanned aerial vehicle that was tracking the CEO’s position and then moved to intercept the car immediately before the explosion.”

“Unmanned aerial vehicle?” Freiheit seemed stunned. “You mean a drone?”

“Yes,” said Cohen, “a drone.”

“Doesn’t look like a drone.”

“Not like the military aircraft shown on TV,” said Cohen, “but there are hundreds of other military and civilian models of more designs than you could imagine out there. We can’t get enough information from these low-quality images to positively ID the model, or even establish that it is a drone, but it’s our best working model right now.”

Savas focused intently on the new CEO. “Is there any way this could have been Goldman surveillance? Your Ms. Greenwald was extremely protective of Mr. Craig. Does your company use drones to monitor or keep tabs on Goldman execs?”

Freiheit shook his head vigorously. “Absolutely not. I’ve never even heard it floated as an idea. I’m not sure it would even be legal.”

“It wouldn’t,” said Savas. “Not yet anyway, but the laws on domestic drone use are in dramatic flux. Some honest mistakes could have been made.”

“Not by us, I can assure you. We’ve never had such a security effort and currently have no plans for one. I find these images very disturbing.”

“So do we, Mr. Freiheit. But before we went on any wild-drone chases, the obvious step would be to see if Goldman was in the business. The topic is sensitive, and, I hope I don’t need to emphasize, confidential. So we did need your time today.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

Cohen placed the images back in a folder. “A final item. FBI analysis of phone logs indicates that Mr. Craig made a series of calls to Washington the morning he died. The numbers were resolved to those used by Heidi Moss, the Utah Senator. Since these calls were only minutes before he died, they are of special interest to us. Do you know his relationship with the Senator?”

Freiheit licked his lips quickly and shook his head. “No. I mean, Goldman has many supporters, as well as enemies, on Capitol Hill. It’s not unusual for some of our most important lobbying efforts to come straight from the top, as it were. Business, you understand?” He smiled wanly. “Beyond that, I really have no idea what those conversations might be about.”

T
he interim CEO
walked the agents to the elevator. “Susan will meet you on the Sky Lobby, the eleventh-floor lobby. You should take some time there if you can. It’s quite a view.” Freiheit smiled as the doors closed.

Cohen smirked as the elevator descended. “Bad actor.”

“Yeah, he’s lying,” said Savas. “Not about the drones—I think he was honest there. But there's something going on with the senator.”

She began typing into her phone. “Next shuttle to DC?”

“Think so. Have the team give Moss the heads up that we’ll need to speak with her today.”

“You going to run it through the Washington branch?”

Savas grimaced. “I should. But that will delay everything. I’m so used to the autonomy at Intel 1. I can’t stand the bureaucratic dances, anymore. It’s likely a dead end, so no harm, no foul. Right?”

“Okay,” said Cohen raising her eyebrows. “You know best.”

Savas frowned at her.

[
R
EDACTED
]: Why did Savas purposefully keep other FBI divisions in the dark?

MR. MILLER: I'm not sure. That was a judgment call, maybe the wrong one. But it would have cost time and John felt he was on the scent.

C
BD
: And that's why the two agents immediately flew to D.C.?

MR. MILLER: Yes. At that point we didn't know what was happening. Just got a text message that they were following up on a lead that led them there. Ring the senator's office and let them know.

C
BD
: That would be Senator Moss?

MR. MILLER: Yes.

C
BD
: What did the senator say?

MR. MILLER: I wasn't there, but we were briefed when they returned.

C
BD
: And what were you told in that briefing?

D
usk had arrived in Washington
. Street lamps engaged, drivers switched their headlights on, and the buildings took on a checkerboard pattern of light and dark. The large window before the FBI agents looked down to the busy streets, the view blocked by the form of an older woman before them.

“This is highly irregular and very short notice, but I understand the circumstances are unusual,” said Senator Moss.

Savas and Cohen had rushed to meet with the congresswoman as fast as possible, but extracting themselves from New York and navigating the D.C. rush-hour traffic had put them in much later than they would have preferred. They were lucky to catch Moss before she left for the day. High-level phone calls had helped constrain the situation—when the CEO of Goldman Sachs is blown up in Manhattan, normal etiquette is suspended.

“Indeed they are, Senator,” said Savas as they took seats around her desk. Moss was nearing sixty, yet still carried the grace and self-assured mannerisms of the opera singer she had been a lifetime ago. Cohen had quickly filled out her resume for them on the way over. A fourth-term Republican from Utah, she had been a vocal critic of internet freedoms because of cyber-threats to national security and had worked to enact laws to bring the wild online world under increasing surveillance and regulation. As chair of the Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Innovation, she now exercised enormous influence on national telecommunications.

Cohen leaned forward toward the senator. “Only minutes before he was killed, Goldman Sachs CEO Jack Craig made several phone calls to your office number, Senator. Can you tell us what these calls were about?”

“Those are privileged communications. Unless we want to get very messy with the lawyers, I can’t divulge what was discussed. However, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Issues of business and telecom, with Mr. Craig arguing for certain approaches that he felt would be beneficial to the country and his business.”

She smiled. For far too long. Savas picked up the thread.

“Could it perhaps have something to do with the highly unusual series of votes that have come from you the last month, Senator?” Moss’ smiled faltered. “My colleague here has tallied not only a surprising reversal of several positions on the congressional floor, but also an increasing number of articles in the press trying to figure out just what exactly is going on.”

“I’m not sure what you are talking about. The press is always looking for a critical angle, you know that. My positions have always been clear. Certainly, different pieces of legislation can embody my positions to different degrees of satisfaction, and voting for or against a bill is often complicated by the sausage-like production methods of these laws, where the good and bad can be mixed together.”

Cohen didn’t mask her annoyance. “I’m sure that’s true. But there are bills that hardly changed where your votes have flipped. For example, Murdock-Holsen. A bill that would have denied the NSA certain access to internet communications. You initially opposed that bill, gave speeches against it, opposing the very nature of limited access by our surveillance branches.” Cohen read from her tablet. “To quote from your speech, you called it ‘A dangerous bill that would tie the hands of our law enforcement agencies and aid the work of criminals and terrorists.’ Yet three weeks ago you stopped speaking against it and have voted twice to move the bill through committee to a vote.”

“I believe that the concerns I had were adequately addressed in the revised version.”

Savas could see the woman’s lip trembling, the tightness in her hand grasping the side of her desk. Cohen seemed to notice as well. This topic had put Senator Moss under tremendous stress, and his instincts told him she was lying to them.
What are you so afraid of, Senator Moss?

“Has the topic of domestic drones ever been part of your conversations with Goldman Sachs?” asked Cohen.

The terrified look intensified, and the senator glanced quickly toward photo frames on her desk. She seemed to half-whisper the next words. “No. Never. Why do you ask?” The false smile almost seemed macabre, now.

Cohen ignored her question. “You are on the record as supporting their use.”

“Yes,” she said distractedly, seeming not to see the FBI agents anymore and gazing behind them. “They are needed for homeland security. To make us safe. That’s what I thought.”

Savas furrowed his brows. “What you
thought?
”

She blinked quickly and regained focus. “What I
think
, yes, agent Savas. Law enforcement can make great use of drones to pursue criminals when vehicle chases would be impossible or dangerous, take surveillance without endangering officers, many things.”

“And what of arming them?”

She cocked her head to the side. “That has been discussed in closed-door sessions, but I don’t see that as necessary or likely in the near future.”

Savas sensed her resolve returning and saw that they were losing the advantage. He spoke on a hunch. “Are those your daughters?”

Instantly, an anxiety seemed to spread over her features. She smiled stiffly. “Why, yes, yes. Margaret and Sophia. Twins. They’re in college now, opposite sides of the country.” Her fingers curled inward toward her palm, the nails digging slightly into the wood. "Identical twins and so different. Isn't that strange?"

“How are they doing?” he continued.

“Well!” she nearly shouted. Cohen leaned backward, and the senator adjusted her tone instantly. “Sophia’s pre-med, 4.0. Margaret’s still finding her way, but she’s doing great. Absolutely great.” That smile again.

“Well, try to appreciate every minute, senator,” said Savas earnestly. “I can tell you, you never know what you have until it’s gone.”

Her face blanched. “Yes. You know all too well, agent Savas. I will. I promise you.”

T
hey stepped
out of the Russell Senate Office Building into the brisk October evening, a black town car before them, waiting by the curb. Savas pulled his collar up and turned to Cohen.

“Well, what do you make of
that?
”

She shook her head, a cool breeze tossing brown hair about her face. “She’s been compromised, John. Did you see the terror in her eyes? You pushed a very bad button with her kids.”

“But who? And what? And why with fear? Don’t the players just buy their way to influence these days? Corporations are people, all that?”

She nodded. “This doesn’t make sense, and it feels very dark. Moss is a believer, John. You can see it all over her record. I’m not saying she’s above lobbying or influence, but nothing in her twenty years in the Senate compares with what’s happened the last few weeks. She’s either had a mental breakdown, a stroke or something, or what we saw means somebody has her in a very bad vice.”

“Her kids?”

“We should look into them. Check on their whereabouts, status. Start tonight with social media, get some shoes on the ground at their schools.”

“If they were snatched, we’d know.”

“True. But maybe something will come out of it if there has been some kind of threat.”

“Political? Dirty laundry?”

“Always in play with these folks.”

They arrived at the vehicle, and Savas opened the back door for Cohen. They got in and he slammed it shut distractedly.

“Reagan National,” he told the driver. He whispered to Cohen. “A CEO car bombed. A US senator looking blackmailed and changing her votes. What’s going on?”

She stared out the window. “Nothing good, that's for sure.”