Fatal Conceit (24 page)

“I did.”

“We didn't,” Jaxon said. “The Chechen word for lion is
lom
, as in Lom Daudov, the separatist leader whom the Russians blamed for the attack. He's the guy my team was trying to contact to help find Al-Sistani before Al-Sistani beat us to the punch. Daudov is known to his followers as ‘the lion of God,' and ‘Lion' was our codeword for him.”

“So Lucy was asking him to save her?”

“Yes, I think so, but not directly,” Jaxon replied. “She wouldn't have thought that Lom would see this disc or know Native American
sign language. I think she's telling us to reach out to Daudov; maybe he knows how to find Al-Sistani.”

“What chance do you have of that . . . before it's too late?”

“I can't give you any odds, but it's the only option I see right now. I have a team standing by but we don't know where to find him, much less ask for his help, with our own government blaming him for the attack. The Russians are after him with everything they've got, and no doubt our people are cooperating with them. So he's gone into hiding. Nor can we safely ask the CIA to assist with their local contacts because we don't know the good guys from the bad guys.”

“Then I don't get it,” Karp said. “How are we going to find Daudov?”

“Well, it's a long shot, but we think we know one person whom Daudov would be interested in using for his own political purposes, which might make him willing to help us rescue Lucy and Deputy Chief of Mission Huff.”

“Who?”

Jaxon paused to look long and hard at Karp. “Nadya Malovo, known to Daudov as Ajmaani.”

The name settled over the room like a noxious dark cloud. Nadya Malovo was a beautiful Russian assassin who had crossed swords frequently with Karp, his family, and his associates. She worked for the highest bidder, and at one point in the past that had been the Russian government and the Russian mob, for whom she had assumed the identity of Ajmaani, a Chechen Islamic terrorist.

“Why would Daudov want Nadya?” Karp asked.

“If he could get her to tell the truth, and he probably has his ways,” Jaxon said, “she's proof that at least some of the atrocities committed in Chechnya and Russia that were blamed on separatists were actually manufactured by the Russians as a pretext for invading and controlling Chechnya. She would demonstrate that the idea of a nexus between Islamic extremists and secular nationalists like Daudov is false.”

“So how would we get word to him, even if we had Nadya?” Karp asked.

“We think we can still contact a young woman, Deshi Zakayev, who was our team's liaison with Daudov,” Jaxon said. “Because there were no female fatalities, we're hoping she either wasn't in the compound or escaped. If we can get Nadya, our team will be inserted and make contact with her.”

“That's a big
if
,” Karp said. “I don't even know if she's still alive or how we would pry her out of the hands of David Grale.”

One of Malovo's major employers after she left Russia for the United States had been Andrew Kane, an extremely wealthy former NYC mayoral candidate and, more pertinently, an evil mastermind who considered Karp his archnemesis. One of his plots with Malovo had been to blow up a natural gas container ship as it passed beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, only once again to be thwarted by Karp and Company. Kane had managed to elude Jaxon, only to be captured by David Grale, the half-mad leader of a large community of homeless souls known as the Mole People, who lived in the subway tunnels, sewers, and natural caves beneath the city.

Malovo had eventually been caught and sent to a maximum-security federal prison. But she'd plotted her way out of there as well. Almost two years earlier, having claimed to turn over a new leaf, she began assisting U.S. antiterrorism agencies, including Jaxon's, and helped stop several terrorist plots by infiltrating several groups as Ajmaani. However, the entire time she was actually planning her escape while gaining a financial windfall of enormous proportions.

She hatched a plan for suicide bombers to blow themselves up in the crowd at the annual Halloween Parade in Manhattan's West Village. One of the bombers had specifically tried to target Karp, who was the parade grand marshal, and his family. But the attack on the parade and the Karp family was only secondary to her real intention, which was to free Kane from Grale. Of course, her efforts were not
motivated by any loyalty or feelings for Kane—Karp doubted that she had such emotions—but by the fact that only Kane knew the account numbers and passwords for offshore banks where he'd stashed hundreds of millions of dollars. However, Grale, who always seemed to be one step ahead of his enemies, had discovered her plan and was waiting for her when she dared enter the inner sanctum of his dark kingdom. Word on the street from the likes of Dirty Warren was that, like Kane, Malovo was now a captive, too.

Years of entreaties by Karp through intermediaries to convince Grale to release his two prisoners to his office for prosecution had been rejected. Dirty Warren said that foul-ups by law enforcement agencies, such as releasing Amir Al-Sistani, even though that was not Karp's fault and he would have stopped it if he could, had soured Grale on cooperating, though he liked Karp personally.

But there was one thing Karp hadn't tried. He looked at his watch and stood up. “I think the only chance we have of getting Malovo is for me to go ask Grale personally,” he said.

Standing as well, Jaxon frowned. “That could be dangerous. What I understand from talking to Lucy is that he's subject to wild mood swings, maybe schizophrenia, and sometimes even his followers are afraid of him.”

“It's about my daughter,” Karp said. “And maybe the country's future. But I need to get to Dirty Warren before he closes up for the day, and it's almost that time. You coming?”

As the two men rode the elevator to the ground floor, Karp wondered how Marlene was coming with her expedition; he hadn't heard from her since she was about to arrive in Orvin in the upstate New York Finger Lakes region. He wished she would have taken at least Clay for backup, but she wasn't willing to wait for him, nor was she sure of finding who she was looking for. “And I don't want to waste his time,” she said, “if it's a wild goose chase.” But he wasn't too worried; his wife could be as lethal as a venomous snake if challenged, and Stupenagel was no pushover.
She said she wasn't getting good reception,
he assured himself.

They reached the sidewalk just as Dirty Warren was lowering the heavy wooden panel that secured his newsstand for the night. “Why don't you hang back a little,” Karp told Jaxon. “He might be more comfortable talking about Grale if it's just me.”

As Jaxon waited, he continued forward and called out, “Hey, Warren, got a minute?”

Hearing his friend's voice, Dirty Warren turned toward Karp with a smile on his face but frowned when he saw the situation was serious. “Sure, Butch . . . whoop balls . . . what's up?”

“I need to talk to David,” Karp replied. “As soon as possible. It's important.”

“What? Whoop!”

“David Grale. I have to talk to him. Tonight. Now.”

“Uh, that's what I thought you said . . . oh boy fuck me whoop . . . not possible.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for starters, even when . . . oh boy ohhhhh boy . . . David's in a—how should I put this delicately—good mood you don't just drop by for a . . . bullshit asshole . . . visit,” Dirty Warren said, the nervous tics that were part of his Tourette's syndrome threatening to take over his face while his torrent of profanity increased. “And he's definitely not in a good mood these days; in fact, he's in very . . . whoop whoop . . . bad mood. Very bad. I don't even go there when he's like this. You never know what he's going to do . . . motherfucking scumbag whoop . . . or who he might decide is ‘evil.' And you know what that would mean.”

Dirty Warren shuddered at the thought, and Karp understood that his quirky friend was truly afraid. But as he'd just said to Jaxon, his daughter's life was on the line. “Please, Warren,” he pleaded. “It's about Lucy. She's in danger.”

The little news vendor's pale blue eyes widened beneath the thick lenses of his glasses and then he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “But only you. Espy can't go. David doesn't know him.”

“I may need him,” Karp said. He quickly explained what he hoped to accomplish.

The nervous tics increased, as did his hopping from foot to foot. “Oh, Christ . . . whoop whoooooop . . . that's what you want? Oh, geez . . . ass balls tits whoop whoop oh boy ohhhhhh boy. Well, they still can't go; they'd never even get to David.
If
David doesn't cut my throat for bringing you, and
if
he doesn't cut us both into quivering pieces afterward, and
if
he agrees to let you have Malovo—and I don't think he's going to—he'll provide the escort until she's handed over to your guys on the outside. Personally, I think we're dead men. Give me an hour and I'll call on your cell phone to let you know.”

As promised, Dirty Warren called in about an hour. “At first he just laughed at me . . . whoop . . . it wasn't a nice laugh. But then I told him that Lucy was . . . cocks scumbag oh boy . . . in trouble, and he said he'd listen to you but not to get your hopes up.”

Dirty Warren said that Jaxon and any others would have to wait in Battery Park, but for Karp to go down into the subway and wait on the platform. “Get in the last car,” he said. “You're going to . . . oh boy whoop . . . take a ride. No guarantees you'll be coming back. I hate to say this . . . asswipe bastard . . . because I love the man, but David's crazy.”

•  •  •

When they got on the train, Karp saw Dirty Warren sitting in the back of the otherwise empty car. Just before the doors closed, a young black man came running down the stairs intending to get into their car, but Booger grabbed him by the chest and propelled him back out of the car.

The train pulled away from the platform and headed uptown. Each time it stopped and anyone tried to get on, Booger charged
down the aisle shouting at the top of his lungs. “ ' Et off ! 'Et off !” No one argued with him.

Meanwhile, Karp and Dirty Warren rode silently. The train traveled north and then, shortly after leaving the 42nd Street station, it slowed and then stopped in the tunnel. The train operator's voice came on over the intercom. “We have stopped for a routine maintenance crew to depart. Please keep your seats and stand back from the doors.”

Dirty Warren stood up just as the car's doors slid open. “This is where we get off. Watch your . . . whoop whoop . . . step.”

Wondering how in the hell Grale was able to command the city subway, Karp followed Dirty Warren and Booger out of the car and down onto the tracks. Then the doors shut and the train moved on. He found himself standing outside a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only” beneath a dim light. It seemed like no surprise when Dirty Warren produced a key that opened the door. Then for the next half hour or so he did his best to keep up with the other two as they made their way through a series of service tunnels—up and down ladders, sloshing through sewers with several inches of foul-smelling liquid in the dark as rats scurried across their path—and natural caves.

Dirty Warren had a small flashlight, which was often the only source of illumination for their path, and sometimes in the dark Karp felt as if he was being watched by unseen eyes. When, during a stop to catch his breath, he commented on it, Dirty Warren told him to ignore it. “It's best not to think about what else and who else . . . oh boy whoop . . . lives down here. Nobody messes with Booger but I wouldn't . . . balls boobs . . . want to come alone, and you should never try.”

They were in what seemed to be a large tunnel, though it was so dark that Karp couldn't see his hand in front of his face and could only follow the beam of the flashlight, when a voice spoke up in front of them.

Suddenly a lantern was lit and two men—one short and fat, the
other tall and thin—stepped out of an alcove carved into the rock. “Well, if it ain't his lordship, Butch Karp,” the tall, skinny one said with a grand bow. “He put me away for robbery once, he did, a looooooong time ago.”

“You deserved it, Clyde,” the short, fat one said. “You were guilty as sin.”

“Right you are, Bert, right you are. But turned over a new leaf, I have, thanks to Father Grale, and look at all it's done for me,” Clyde replied with a sweep of his hand to encompass their dark surroundings.

“Saved your immortal soul, that's what it did for you, you fool,” Bert said. “Now let these good folks pass us by. You are expected, Mr. Karp.”

“Thank you,” Karp said, nodding.

They walked for another five minutes, at last coming to a cavern the size of a large indoor sports arena. It was lit by hundreds of electric bulbs, and Karp recalled stories he'd been told that Grale's followers included electricians who'd tapped into the subway power lines. Several dozen people were on the main floor of the cavern talking, while children kicked balls and chased each other around; others seemed to be working at tasks, such as sorting food and other items brought down from the world above. He could see many more inhabitants going about their personal lives in what appeared to be small rooms carved into the wall.

They all stopped what they were doing and looked when Dirty Warren led him out into the open space. “Hey, it's Butch Karp!” someone yelled. Others started talking to each other until the cavern buzzed with a hundred voices; those people on the floor drew closer and those in the rooms emerged to see what the fuss was about.

“ENOUGH!” a voice roared from one end of the cavern. “Go about your business!”