15. Lockdown
July started hot in New York, like June had ended. There were differences. More people were on the streets during the day, as the Covid lockdown restrictions eased. Quieter nights, as the George Floyd protests faded. I’d become so accustomed to the clatter of helicopters that it was strange to pass a night without their thudding in my dreams.
But because of Atomkrieg, I was in a self-imposed lockdown. I’d moved into a friend’s vacant apartment and swapped my phone for one with a pre-paid SIM—a ‘burner’, like in a thriller. I ordered my meals delivered to the doorman and paid online using an alias. The few times I ventured out, I wore drab clothes, dark glasses, and a hat.
It was easy to rationalize caution. There wasn’t a lot to do in the city that spring. I’d closed my office because of the virus, and met private clients by video. It was easy to justify caution, too. I knew what Atomkrieg could do. I’d seen the corpses.
Between the virus and domestic terrorists, social distancing made sense.
I’d plenty to occupy me; the pandemic and depraved politics meant my peculiar skills were in demand. I held video calls with academics, doctors, cultists, conspiracists, and the patients whose troubles paid my bills. With my mother—lonely in a locked-down hospice. She listened while I talked; I don’t know if she understood anything I said. With my father—as smart as my mother had been, but listless since illness had taken her. Our conversation was mechanical. Then there was Lydia, my ex. I almost called her several times. My finger hovered over the last digit in her latest number.
But my thoughts turned often to Doug Land’s case. He’d sent the files I’d asked for, using a secure online drop-box. I read them, but didn’t reply, because I hadn’t heard from Agent Katz, and I was prepared to be stubborn on that point. I was betting I would hear from her, though, because I held the high card; Assistant Director Roth had asked for my help. Daffy would work something out.
After reading Katz’s affidavit, I looked her up on the Web.
Esther Katz was easy to find. She was ’eKatz’ online. I found her academic paper, but stopped skimming at the first double-decker equation. Parents: a noted cardiologist, a Columbia professor. Sisters: an associate at a law firm, married to a surgeon; a cellist with the Metropolitan Opera, engaged to a lawyer. There were bankers among the cousins and uncles. An Upper East Side townhouse address. Old money.
I found pictures. There she was, with shorter hair. There she was with blue hair on one side, green fuzz on the other, and three studs in one ear. And there, squeezed between laughing, shiny-faced girls, with a wineglass in hand and a spliff dangling from her lips. And was that a tattoo? It was! Maybe Esther was the black sheep of the Katz clan.
That her picture was easy to find gave me an uncomfortable prickle of fear. Barston had painted a target on her, too.
Doug Land had been a Texas Ranger. No surprise.
Marcus Daffy did surprise. He was the one who’d smelled like money to me, but his clan were hardscrabble Georgia farmers with some state politicians and two-bit crooks thrown in. He’d studied law and served in the JAG corps in Iraq.
I searched for a connection between Lem Barston and me, but came up blank until Land’s third batch of documents arrived. That batch included a known associates list and the results of matching Barston’s DNA against federal and state records.
There it was: Max Kriter, ‘klaliff’ of the North Carolina KKK, was listed as an associate of Barston’s. His son, Jason Kriter, was doing time for murder. I’d met Jason when I was helping to put him and fellow ‘Kristall Knights’ behind bars. He was a university grad student then, an Atomkrieg recruit, and a zealous campus recruiter himself.
The eye-opener was in the DNA results. Turned out Jason Kriter wasn’t Max Kriter’s natural son; he was Lem Barston’s son, by Max Kriter’s wife.
Barson sure had it in for the guy who’d put his bastard in prison.
That left the question: who tipped off Barston about me? Land’s files had no answer to that. As far as I knew, Jason Kriter wouldn’t have recognized me or known my real name.
Through Agency’s network, I had access to social media archives, but they were a haystack and I was after a straw-colored pin. I traced Chad Lohman’s angel pictures back two years, to the first he’d responded to on the BetterDead site. The earliest looked nothing like the last in the series—the ones with the triple cross. The first were just indecent, racist Latino caricatures. I found more of the horned angels that had enthralled Lenny Moscone. They’d also changed over time. And I developed a theory about how those pictures had twisted Lohman into a fanatic, and how his faith had been rewarded. They were doing the same to Lenny. But I couldn’t confirm my theory without Katz’s help, without a tool like Pythia to sift through billions of postings.
And I paced. Thinking. Trying to find the connection between diverse crimes, mostly minor, that superficially bore no resemblance to each other. Trying to build an impression of the mind that might connect them. There was something there, all right, but far away and fogbound.
Two weeks passed. What the hell was taking Daffy so long?
My pacing took me often to the windows that overlooked a Chelsea street. Then I would check for the lurking man.
I’d first noticed him a few days after moving in. The glimpsed face upturned toward my windows. The characteristic walk. The same gesture seen often enough to rise from the subconscious. He was not one of those who worked at the deli or the bookshop across the street, or a neighbor who kept regular hours. Not a tourist. The flow of out-of-towners who had vanished with the virus.
This man bought more take-away coffees than most people could drink. He bought a newspaper, then tossed it in the waste bin at the corner, the one not quite out of sight of my window. He leaned against the wall, texting. His clothes changed, but he always wore a white mask. He looked relaxed. He wasn’t clumsy. He didn’t stand out. But he was there too often. He was lurking; I was sure of it.
He didn’t look as I imagined an Atomkrieg killer would look. No hoodie or Hawaiian shirt or Gestapo boots. But I knew better than to trust my imagination.
He was there, lurking, the afternoon Esther Katz called.
“Hey, I’m in town,” she said. “Grab a coffee?”
“Sure.”
She named a cafe on West Broadway, a couple of long blocks from the FBI field office in Lower Manhattan. But between me and Katz was the lurking man. So I called for a limo from a service favored by the upper crust of Wall Street bankers. The cars have steel plates in the doors and bullet-proof glass in the windows.
Then I lurked in the lobby while the lurking man browsed magazines across the street.
When the limo drew up, I had the passenger door open by the time the man had jumped out from behind the magazine rack. The car was on its way by the time he’d run halfway across the street. We left him in the middle of it, with a magazine in his hand that I’m sure he hadn’t paid for.
Katz had a sidewalk table. As the limo drew up to the curb, I picked her out behind a barrier of planters with stumpy olive trees in them.
I masked up for the short walk through the enclosure gate to Katz’s table. She looked even more trig than last time. Her suit was taupe with a steel-blue shimmer. Her dark glasses had the same blue highlight as the cloth. For a computer geek, Katz had sartorial taste. Accessories: a smartphone and a paper cup. To my eyes, the wineglass and spliff in that online photo worked better. But that’s dating me.
In plain gray, I looked drab by comparison. Not that being inconspicuous had helped. The lurker at the bookshop had evidently seen through my clever disguise.
But the guy sharing the table with Katz more than made up for me. He was a GQ cover model if ever I saw one. Ebony skin, MMA fighter’s build, Photoshop-handsome. He wore his suit and shades like he’d been born in them.
Katz and the GQ guy grinned up at me.
I pulled a chair out to an angle with the table so I could see them both. In the seconds I took to get settled, I tried to figure out whether Katz still worked for the Bureau. The shoes: practical, like before. FBI shield? Hidden if she had one. Surely that trim blazer would show a bulge for a Glock 19M holstered under the arm—but it didn’t.
Then I saw it: the same messenger bag leaning against her chair leg. She’d hooked a foot through its shoulder strap and draped it over one knee. That bag wasn’t going anywhere without her. Could be habit, but I figured it was because there was a handgun inside. Location, grin, gun—still with the Bureau, 95%.
Second problem, while I stashed the mask: handshake or fist bump? Anatomy bumps had become the thing in public. In New York, anyway. If you weren’t a Republican. Katz was a New Yorker, but she was FBI and they all voted … Jesus, Arklow, you’ve been cooped up too long.
Katz had her hand out, so I shook it. “Daffy got smart and told Krome where to go,” I said.
She shrugged. “They made a deal, and I’ve you to thank for that. So I thought I’d return it by getting you out of your cave before you get vitamin D deficiency.” With an elegant gesture, she indicated the GQ guy. “This is Senior Special Agent Jerome Clay, from National Security Branch, Counterterrorism Division. He’s my supervisor and partner. An inter-departmental collab, you know? Agent Clay, this is Dr. Arklow.”
“Acting supervisor,” murmured Clay. “Glorified field training officer, really.”
I took his hand. His grin was blinding and his grip warm and controlled, though I figured that hand could crush rocks.
“Jerome or Clay,” he said. “Take your pick. I used to work for Doug Land, whom you’ve met.” His voice was pleasant, his enunciation, Ivy League. He sounded like Barack Obama one octave lower.
“I’ll start with ‘Clay’ and see if I make the cut. James or Arklow, take your pick.” I glanced at Katz. “But I’m ‘Doctor’ only to clients who’ll pay more for the title.”
Katz quirked her lips in annoyance. “You didn’t say that before. I can’t do ‘James’. Because of the Bond movies, you know? You’re so … not him.”
Right. Tom Baker or Wilde—I hadn’t forgotten. I signaled a waiter for coffee, so I didn’t have to reply to that.
The limo I’d hired drove off. It was a black Mercedes GLS, conspicuous even here. Some part of my brain had been making odds on whether Lurking Man or an accomplice had followed. It wouldn’t be hard.
“That what you use for grocery shopping?” asked Katz, nodding toward the vanishing car. The familiar Katz-being-annoyed snarkiness.
“Also to walk my poodle. You know, with the lead out the window. What brings you here?”
“Pythia.”
“Daffy hasn’t fired her?”
“Nope, that’s part of the deal with Krome. I’m not in Pythia field ops anymore. They’re moving back to Quantico. But Daffy’s team has to follow up on alerts if asked.” She leaned forward and said quietly, “Last night, Pythia predicted an attack on a congressional candidate with a 50% probability—that’s the highest ever. We’re here about that. Thought you might want in.”
“I do.”
“If you’re hungry, better order. The visit could take a while.”
Clay pointed to the empty platter in front of him. “Their avocado toast is delicious.”
It was well past lunch and too early for supper. Before I could answer, a man strolling past on the far side of the planter barrier caught my attention. It was Lurking Man.
My expression must have looked comical because Katz turned to follow my gaze.
She lifted her arm. The man lifted his. Then they slapped palms across the planter.
“Yo, Katz, ‘sup?” said Lurking Man.