The King of Fear: A Garrett Reilly Thriller Read online

  The problem was, Markov had not specified a meeting place. He had simply written under the bridge. Bazanov cut down a side street north of the bridge’s car on-ramp and looked for any spot that would allow him to go underneath the structure. He found it on Cherry Street, a small two-way street that led directly under the bridge in an arched tunnel. The street was sparsely trafficked, with no pedestrians. Above the tunnel, cars and trucks honked and inched out of Manhattan, trying to grind their way to Brooklyn. The city’s traffic had not gotten any better with the coming of the night; it seemed to have gotten worse.

  The tunnel under the bridge was dank; yellowy streetlights flickered, casting faint light into the blackness. A homeless man wrapped in blankets was asleep in a shallow alcove. Bazanov could see his face—he had a thick beard and his forehead was caked in months of grime. That was not Markov; no disguise could be so realistic.

  For a moment, Bazanov considered standing in the middle of the tunnel, arms at his side, so Markov could see that he was unarmed and meant no harm, but then, as he stepped deeper into the darkness, he saw an opening across from the sleeping homeless man. An archway seemed to lead to a parking lot, and a playing field and park beyond that. A chain-link fence sealed off the entrance, locked with a small, flimsy padlock. Bazanov picked up a paving stone from the cracked sidewalk and, with one practiced swing, smashed the lock and opened the gate.

  He kept the rock in his hands as a precaution, then slipped behind the gate, closed it again, and turned to face the tunnel to wait for Markov to show up. He got it in his mind that he would not even bother to negotiate with Markov when he showed up. Bazanov would simply smash Markov’s head in with the rock, drag his body behind the gate, cover it with a piece of plastic tarpaulin—he’d noticed a roll of it on the edge of the parking lot—weight it down with rocks, then drop it into the East River. Mission accomplished.

  He was just working up the mental fortitude necessary to carry out such a violent plan when he heard a sharp crack from behind him. The noise was loud and surprising, and it seemed to fill the entire tunnel. A fraction of a second passed as Bazanov’s mind tried to reason out what the sound was, but then he felt a stabbing pain in his back, just below his shoulder, and he knew immediately what the problem was: he’d been shot.

  He spun quickly to confront the shooter, but as he did, another shot rang out, louder than the first one, and Bazanov felt the second bullet hit his body, again in his chest, just to the right of his heart. The force of the bullet knocked all the wind from his lungs—or perhaps, he thought, his lung had collapsed from the impact. He staggered backward, hands lashing out to grab at anything he could to stabilize his body before he fell. He blinked in the darkness and made out a figure barely ten feet away: a man, gun held chest high, a wisp of smoke still floating up from the barrel, staring at Bazanov with searching, interested eyes. It was Markov; Bazanov knew this immediately and would have known without even looking.

  Markov took a tentative step forward and continued to stare at the older man with a look that suggested he was on the verge of asking a question. Bazanov knew what the question was as well: Are you dying? Do I need to shoot you again?

  “Sukin syn!” Bazanov growled, hand clinging desperately to the interlocking ringlets on a section of chain-link fence. Son of a bitch!

  “Prosti,” Markov whispered. I’m sorry. But his face showed no signs of contrition. It was hard and cold and still searching. Bazanov gathered every bit of strength in his body; he knew his only hope was to hail a passerby or a car and get to a hospital quickly. He yanked open the gate whose lock he had smashed and stumbled onto Cherry Street. The streetlights were still flickering, but no cars were passing under the bridge. Bazanov tried to break into a sprint, but he found that his legs had no power. He dropped to his knees on the damp pavement.

  He slumped down, body resting on his elbow, craning his head to look back over his shoulder. Markov had followed him out onto Cherry Street, gun in hand, and was watching Bazanov with those lifeless eyes. A woman had joined Markov. Short and pixielike, she stood right behind Markov and also watched as Bazanov fought to stay alive.

  “You should shoot him again,” she said in English, a trace of erotic excitement in her voice. “One more time to make sure he’s dead.”

  “Ya ne umer, blyad!” Bazanov hissed. I am not dead, you whore!

  Markov squinted in the dim light. “Why did you come here?”

  Bazanov gasped for breath as he felt his lungs filling up with fluid. He knew it was blood, had seen it many times before in his life—a soldier hit in the chest and slowly drowning to death in his own hemoglobin. He needed a hospital. He needed a doctor. Yet, that son of a whore Markov needed to be taught a lesson as well. . . .

  “To kill you, you little cunt,” Bazanov said in English, lashing out desperately with his right hand to snare Markov’s foot. Bazanov had moved quickly, coiled and able, but his arm hadn’t responded with the speed that his brain had demanded. His hand was weak and slow.

  Markov stepped gingerly out of the way. He raised the gun again. “I guess it didn’t work out.” He aimed his gun at Bazanov’s head. “Too bad.”

  CHERRY STREET, LOWER MANHATTAN, JUNE 25, 1:01 A.M.

  Bingo had seen a dead body before—an OD’d junkie in an alley in Oakland—but never one with its brains splattered over the sidewalk in bright red stripes. When the NYPD detective told him to prepare for a gruesome crime scene, Bingo figured he’d get sick at the sight of it, but he had a completely different reaction when Gennady Bazanov’s body was unsheathed in the tunnel under the Manhattan Bridge. The sight of him splayed out on the pavement gave Bingo a hidden thrill: Bazanov was dead, and Bingo was alive. That fact alone made Bingo strangely satisfied.

  There were few moments in life when Bingo felt he had an advantage over anybody else, but this was one of them. He’s dead; I’m not, Bingo thought. That’s a net positive.

  The streetlights in the tunnel under the bridge were strong enough to allow Bingo and the rest of the Ascendant team to make out the details of the crime scene, but little more. Celeste stood nearby, as did Agent Chaudry. Alexis and Garrett wandered back and forth across the street. Bazanov’s suit jacket lay perfectly over his shoulders and torso; it looked as if it had been arranged for viewing by a mortician. A spray of blood painted the concrete, mixed with what looked like shards of skull and clumps of hair. Grisly as that was, Bingo couldn’t turn away. He wanted to know why Bazanov was dead. And how it had happened.

  Detective Samuelson—young and trim, wearing a short-sleeve shirt and beige slacks—aimed the beam of a Maglite across Bazanov’s shoulders and arm.

  “Did he have any ID?” Chaudry asked, standing behind Bingo, staring down at the body.

  “Russian passport, diplomatic papers. They said he was a . . .” Samuelson pulled out a notepad from his suit jacket and read aloud, “ ‘Commercial sales consultant,’ from something called the Kirov Oblast. Whatever that means.”

  “Oblast is like a state,” Bingo said. “Kirov is north and east of Moscow.”

  “The sales-consultant bit is his cover,” Chaudry said. “Spies won’t enter the country without a diplomatic job.”

  “He also had a wallet, some rubles, two hundred bucks US, a couple of credit cards. And a cell phone.”

  “Did you check the call log on the phone?” Chaudry asked.

  “It’s in Russian. We’ll have it translated back at the precinct.”

  Celeste stepped into a pool of light, eyes locked on the body. She, like Bingo, seemed unable to look away from the tragedy. Bingo suspected that the horror of it gave her the same kind of strange pleasure that it seemed to be giving him—psychic relief from their internal pain. “Could I see the cell phone? I’m a linguist. I’m not fluent, but I have a little Russian.”

  “It’s in the backseat of the cruiser,” the detective said. “Make sure you wear glove
s when you touch it. Get a pair from my partner.” He pointed to another suited NYPD detective, standing by a police car, chatting with a uniformed patrol officer. Celeste took a last, loving look at the body, then hurried off to investigate the phone. Bingo made a mental note to himself to talk to her about this later—he wanted to make sure he wasn’t being too ghoulish. Or, if he was, that he had a partner.

  “You said you thought he was shot over there. Behind the gate.” Garrett pointed to an open gate in the middle of the tunnel. “Why?”

  “First shot was probably to the back, entry wound just above the lung. No exit wound,” Samuelson said. “The next shot entered through his chest, so I’m guessing he spun around to get a look at the shooter, who fired one more bullet to the front. We found two shell casings behind the gate. Nine mill, regular rounds. And a third on the street.”

  Bingo watched as the detective played the beam of his flashlight over the cyclone fence, the gate, the snapped lock, and then the parking lot and playfield beyond the tunnel. The playfield was empty and unlit, taking on a lonely, haunted appearance. The city had quieted down some, now that it was one in the morning, although Bingo had seen garbage-can fires on a number of street corners during the drive to the bridge, as well as the shattered windows of a dozen looted electronics stores. The sound of police sirens still echoed through the night air.

  “Okay, so you were right,” Chaudry said. “Bazanov was looking for Markov.”

  “And Markov killed him,” Alexis said, walking back across the street.

  “So your supposition about Markov going rogue makes sense as well,” Chaudry said.

  “You know who the shooter was?” Samuelson’s voice rose in anger.

  “Probably,” Garrett said. “But maybe not.”

  The police detective glared at Garrett and Alexis. “Who the fuck are you again?”

  Bingo thought he saw a sliver of a smile crease Garrett’s face. Bingo had seen that look before, when Garrett knew he was pissing someone off and didn’t care—or actually, when he pissed someone off and enjoyed it. Bingo had to admit that it was kind of nice to see that look reappear on Garrett’s face—it meant he was healthy again. He’d regained his edge.

  “What about that piece of concrete?” Garrett pointed to a chunk of sidewalk resting ten feet from the dead man’s outstretched hands.

  “Might have been holding it, trying to protect himself,” Alexis said.

  “No way to get prints off concrete,” Samuelson said.

  “Or it could be a weapon that Bazanov was holding to hit the shooter,” Garrett said. “Only the shooter surprised him.” Garrett walked a few feet down the sidewalk, then pointed to a jagged hole in the pavement. “He pulled it up from there.”

  Chaudry eyed the hole. “He was waiting behind the fence, watching the tunnel, thinking the shooter was going to walk past. But the shooter was already here, guessed where Bazanov was going to hide, and came up behind him.”

  Bingo thought about that scenario, then held up his hand to speak, as he always did. Garrett nodded to him, teacher to student.

  “That story would follow Markov’s pattern. The chess player. He lures his opponents in, lets them believe they’re outthinking him, but they’re actually two steps behind. Markov knew Bazanov’s vulnerability.”

  “Which was?” Chaudry asked.

  Bingo thought about the question. What was the pattern in Bazanov’s behavior that Markov recognized? He wasn’t as practiced as Garrett was in spotting patterns, but if he could discover this one, that would be an intellectual coup.

  “Arrogance,” Celeste Chen said, walking back into the tunnel from the squad car, a cell phone in her gloved hand.

  “Explain,” Chaudry said.

  “Bazanov texted five numbers over the last twenty-four hours, with basically the same message. ‘Contact me. We need to talk.’ He sent that message twenty different times. Never got a response. Then, at six thirteen p.m., he texted a slightly different message to a new number. ‘I’m in New York City. We need to meet.’ He gets a response three hours later, nine oh one p.m. ‘Under the bridge.’ All these are in Russian, by the way.”

  “That doesn’t explain your answer,” Chaudry said.

  “Yes, it does,” Garrett said. “Bazanov and Ilya Markov knew each other. The first twenty texts prove that. Bazanov has a host of numbers for Markov, tries them all. He’s demanding, aggressive. He’s the alpha. Bazanov is a trained operative. Markov, I’m guessing, is not. He’s the opposite. Quiet, lurking. The texts reveal Bazanov’s mind-set: superior, the boss. Then Bazanov lands in the US and uses another number to get Markov. Somehow he found a way to contact him, and it works. Maybe through an intermediary. Bazanov feels he has the upper hand.”

  Celeste picked up the thread of the story. “The reply comes in at nine p.m. Not sure where either of them are, but we can probably trace cell-tower information. Bazanov rushes here. Maybe he was already close. He figures he’s here before Markov, has the jump on him—”

  “He grabs that rock as a weapon,” Garrett continued, “and hides in that alcove area. He used the rock to break the lock. Again, aggressive, superior.”

  “He was arrogant because he felt taking down Markov would be easy,” Bingo said. He felt a rush of pleasure run through his body as he joined the conversation. “Physically easy. The lack of precautions shows that. And it would have been easy, but Markov had been there all along. And he had a gun.”

  Garrett and Alexis nodded their agreement. Bingo had to hold back a snort of joy. They had teased out the answers—they knew how Bazanov had been killed.

  “But the why,” Garrett said, as if he had heard Bingo’s thoughts. “We haven’t figured out the why. And without that, things will not get better. They will get worse.”

  EAST RIVER, JUNE 25, 4:47 A.M.

  Exoplanets.

  Garrett felt that they held the key—the wobble and spin of the visible that shone light on the invisible. Somehow, that was the answer to all that was happening.

  But how?

  He stood on the bicycle path that ran between the strip of park and the churning blackness of the East River. Brooklyn lay across the water, its buildings and warehouses dotted with yellow and white lights, and Manhattan lay behind him, its towers looming in the faint dawn. Garrett leaned on the railing that kept errant cyclists from diving into the river, although no bikers were out at five in the morning. There was just Garrett, with the Ascendant team a hundred yards away, watching, waiting for him to come up with an answer.

  Go back to first principles, he thought. A to B to C.

  An astronomer.

  That’s what Garrett was. He was an astronomer of unnatural phenomena, staring up at the heavens trying to piece together the secrets of the universe. The money universe. The terror universe. But the secrets were not revealing themselves to him. They were staying invisible.

  His head hurt. Throbbed. The crack in his skull was telling him that he needed a palliative remedy. Drugs. Prescription drugs. Any drugs would do, really. But he couldn’t. Not now, maybe not ever again. He had mental clarity through his pain, and that was the one thing he had been missing all this time. He could not relinquish it. He must not.

  Another thought flitted across his mind. Gravity.

  Money created its own gravity—that’s what Avery had told him long ago. Money warped the world around it, just as a massive star bent light as the light passed by. But what was the money bending now? Garrett tried to cut a path through the data swirling in his head. He stared up in frustration at the graying sky above Brooklyn. No stars were visible—they rarely were through the light pollution. Brooklyn sat out there, a borough orbiting Manhattan.

  What about time? Or distance? Perhaps they were the keys. For instance—why lower Manhattan? Why had Bazanov and Markov met at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge, just across the river from . . . Broo
klyn.

  The borough was mere minutes away. Suddenly, the pattern began to make sense. Garrett felt it, that pulse of knowledge, an ember in his nervous system, beginning to heat up. He blinked rapidly in the dark, trying to concentrate while at the same time not concentrating at all—the complicated balance of knowing and not knowing that always preceded his understanding.

  What if Crowd Analytics was the next company to be targeted by the money rushing out of that criminal dark pool? Kenny Levinson, the young CEO, lived across the river in Brooklyn. Garrett had seen his fabulous brownstone in the online magazine. If Garrett wanted to find Levinson, it wouldn’t be hard. That meant Markov could find him as well.

  Garrett turned his gaze southward. He could see Brooklyn Heights, the neighborhood where Levinson lived, low buildings and piers just above the river, an enclave of wealth and privilege at the far western tip of the borough.

  But why would Markov want to find Levinson? It didn’t fit the pattern. So far the pattern had been to buy and sell stock and follow it up with a crime paid for by that buying and selling. But there hadn’t been any buying or selling yet. There was only panic. Where was the crime?

  But perhaps, Garrett thought, he had the sequence wrong. Perhaps there was about to be a crime. Maybe that was why Bazanov had come to America—because he knew a final crime was just in the offing. The pattern was reversed. The final crime would be the piece that set the true chaos in motion. That made sense. It would also explain the wobble in the Crowd Analytics stock—it wasn’t buying and selling for profit. It was the setting-up of positions in the company’s stock. Short selling, maybe. Someone was getting ready to profit off a real-world event—a crime.

  About to happen. Maybe even about to happen . . . right now.

  With that thought, Garrett raced back across the bike path and the strip of grass, yelling as he went, “We need to go. We need to go now.”