Deadly Heat (41 page)

In their rekindled, albeit fragile, spirit of cooperation, Special Agent Callan dispatched his top forensic specialists to join Heat’s detectives at Carey Maggs’s apartment atop the Upper East Side high-rise, as well as at his brewery gastropub at the South Street Seaport. Much as in the searches that had been made at Salena Kaye’s SRO in Coney Island, Vaja Nikoladze’s compound upstate, and Sharon Hinesburg’s one-bedroom, they’d hunt for material evidence like computers, mail, and receipts, as well as sniff-sweep for bioagents.

Saying he felt his “asshole puckering by the minute” as noon arrived one day before the bioterror target date, Callan also activated military resources to stop and search every truck coming into Manhattan, augmenting the spot checks NYPD had already initiated at key zones around the island. He also triggered the army and National Guard roll-out of the disaster medical apparatus they had discussed in the bunker at Homeland headquarters. The Fort Washington Armory uptown in Washington Heights plus the two armories at opposite ends of Lexington Avenue were being converted to vast indoor medical triage centers. Underneath the RFK Triboro Bridge, the soccer fields of Randall’s Island would quietly overnight become a military tent city for mass casualties.

Higher-ups held to their decision not to announce the coming threat. “Without specifics, all it would cause is panic.” At that moment, everyone in that precinct knew what that felt like.

They decided to let Detective Heat continue as lead in the interrogation. Unfortunately Carey Maggs decided to continue his pose of indignant innocence. Several hours into his genteel stonewall Detective Rhymer slipped into Interrogation One and passed Heat a file of research he had pulled from his bank canvasses. She perused it and gave Maggs a look of significance. “Let’s talk about Salena Kaye. You recall Salena Kaye, right?”

“By name I do. But only because you’ve been flogging on about her as if we should be mates. Wouldn’t know her if I tripped on her, as I’ve made clear.”

“We know that Salena Kaye was busy lately contacting radical jihadists, searching for volunteers to martyr themselves. I called it volunteering, but she has been offering a hundred thousand dollars to the families of whoever signs up.”

“If you say. I still don’t see how this has bugger all to do with me.”

“One hundred thousand dollars. Where would a registered physical therapist like Salena Kaye get her hands on a spare hundred grand or two?”

“Ask her.”

“She’s dead. And you know it, don’t you?” Maggs kept his eyes
passive during the silence that followed. His expression gave away nothing. “I want you to tell me. Whom did she hire and where are they?”

“I guess we’re stumped” was all he said.

Accustomed to the denials, she pressed on and held up a scanned page from the file Rhymer had brought her. “Just got some interesting information here. Salena Kaye’s personal account received a wire transfer for two hundred thousand dollars this week from a bank named Clune Worldwide Holdings.” She set that page down and took out the next sheet. “This is a copy of the receipt from the credit card Salena Kaye used at Surety Rent-a-Car the other day when she tried to rent a box truck. We ran a search and the line of credit was funded through Clune Worldwide Holdings.” She paused. No response, so she produced another page. “The personal bank statement of Sharon Hinesburg.”

“Another name you insist I should know.”

“See these yellow highlights?” She held the statement up; he barely gave it a glance. “These are one-thousand-dollar payments wired electronically into Hinesburg’s account from Clune Worldwide Holdings.”

“And?”

“And,” she echoed, turning another page, “Clune Worldwide Holdings, an offshore bank located in the Cayman Islands—aka Switzerland with palm trees, when it comes to money laundering—is the same bank that happens to maintain the account for Mercator Watch, the charitable organization you fund.”

“Means nothing,” he said. “The bank I use also happens to pay those other people? Lots of banks pay other people. One bank in those TV adverts seems to pay Vikings. Does that make their other customers Vikings, too?” He chuckled.

They allowed Maggs a supervised bathroom break, and when he came back into Interrogation to find Rook seated beside Heat, it took him off balance, if only slightly. He covered with more nonchalance. “Glad, actually, to have an investigative journalist join the proceedings.
If they sod me off to Gitmo, I’ll need someone to record the injustice.”

“Full disclosure, I’m not here to chronicle the Free Carey campaign. I’m helping Detective Heat stop you from killing innocent people.”

“Well, at least we understand each other.”

“More and more,” said Heat.

Rook continued, “You might even say that I understand everything, Carey. All of it.” Maggs’s eyes darted to the papers the writer had brought with him. “See, one of the perks of being an investigative journalist is I have this cool list of high-level sources. It’s an interesting relationship. Sometimes I owe them payback for favors, sometimes they owe me. I have a high-level guy at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and, hoo-rah, it was his turn to put out.

“There’s an old Watergate catchphrase. ‘Follow the money.’ It was sort of the ‘What’s in your wallet?’ of its day.” Rook winked. “Now, with my SEC friend’s help, it only took me a couple of hours to follow yours and gather your investment portfolio. I know the entire distribution of your wealth. Well, at least the part you don’t stuff in your shoes when you fly to the Caymans.”

Maggs strained to read the pages upside down as Rook arranged them in the order he wanted before he continued. “Mercator Watch. Your foundation that monitors international child labor abuse. Actually more a fund. Let’s set that aside and look at your investments. All profitable, congratulations.” He turned a page. “Pranco Corporation, European government contracts to build low-cost housing in Third World villages decimated by war. Nevwar Enterprises, multimillion-dollar, multinational manufacturing company employing ex-prisoners of conscience from totalitarian regimes.” He looked up from the page. “It goes on and on like this, Carey. One company after another turning a solid profit on radical ideals and causes.”

“None of that makes me a fucking terrorist, does it?”

“On the contrary, it’s like Brewery Boz being founded on the Charles Dickens principle of exposing social injustice.”

“And corporate greed,” said Maggs in a blurt of anger. “My
portfolio is all ethical capitalism, beating the fucking one-percenters at their own game. There’s no crime in that.” It was the first time Heat had seen him worked up.

Rook nodded agnostically and turned to the last page. “All fine. But this one here. This stands out as, I dare say…” He turned to Heat.

“An odd sock?” she asked.

“Let’s see. You are the principal shareholder in a BeniPharm Corporation.” They watched Carey Maggs’s blink rate double. “Now, the odd-sock part is that BeniPharm’s the only investment in your jacket that is not in the radical scheme.” Rook returned to the SEC data. “It says here the company was formed in 1998 with your cash and a token buy-in by minor partner, Ari Weiss, MD… now deceased. The company rolled along and along, operating solely on paper, for all intents, until two years ago when it branded itself with a signature product. Do you want to say what it is, or shall I?”

Maggs cleared his throat and said in a tattered voice, “Smallpox medicine.”

“Interesting,” said Heat.

“BeniPharm’s prospectus says it’s uniquely positioned itself as the world’s leading source for the smallpox antiviral remedy. I didn’t realize it until Detective Heat got hers, but if you get this medicine within five days of exposure, you won’t get smallpox.”

“That’s right,” said Maggs.

Heat asked, “Why throw all that effort into a medicine for an extinct disease?”

“Paranoia,” said Rook. “We live in an era where nuts can unleash bioterror. In fact, according to this, BeniPharm has a contract from the United States government for half a billion dollars’ worth of your company’s smallpox medicine.”

“Nothing wrong with that. I… we… perform a public service.”

Heat said, “And what would happen to your profits if there were a smallpox outbreak?”

“You’re reaching—”

“Or if smallpox were weaponized and released in a terror event? In a major metro area?”

“This is a frame.”

“What would it do?” Nikki asked. “Would your profits double? Triple? Would other countries buy in? Tell me, what would you gain? Ten times the profit?” Heat rose, shouting, slapping a palm on the table. “Is that worth killing thousands of innocent people? Was that the cost of my mother’s life, you son of a bitch?”

Spent, Heat stood there panting. The room grew still.

At last, calmer, she spoke. “Do one right thing, Maggs. Tell me when and where.”

He rocked his head. “I’ll tell you this.” And when he had their attention, he said, “You’re all still guessing.”

Heat flung the door with both hands, and it smacked the wall in the Observation Room. “I can’t break him.”

“You did great,” said Callan.

Bell said to Rook, “You both did great. Couldn’t have played it better.”

Through the window, they saw Maggs slouched in his chair with his head tilted back, eyes closed. He could have been a commuter dozing on the train to Connecticut instead of the prime suspect in a mass terror plot. “He’s got balls,” said Rook. “He comes just to the point you think he’s going to crack, and he sucks ’em up.”

“What’s he got to lose?” said Bell. “You laid it out yourself. An upside of billions, if he keeps his mouth shut; life in prison if he suddenly gets a conscience.”

“After five o’clock,” said Callan. “I say we move off traditional means and take him for a ride to the Black Barn.”

Rook’s face lit up. “You guys really have a Black Barn?”

Callan frowned and looked at Nikki. “Is he for real?”

“Well,” insisted Rook, “do you?”

Nikki said, “He’s not going anywhere. We don’t do that.”

Behind her, Yardley Bell chuckled softly. Agent Callan said to Rook, “She’s right. Sadly, this is US soil. Much as I wouldn’t mind doing a little tenderizing, we’re going to have to keep working him
constitutionally.” He walked to the window and said, “Let’s take five. When we come back, I get my shot at this prick.”