Malice

16

The same stiff breeze that had buffeted V. T. Newbury nearly half the length of Manhattan to the north caught up to Ariadne Stupenagel and Gilbert Murrow when they stepped out of the Whitehall Street subway station at the southern tip of the island where the Hudson and East rivers meet. "Maybe we should go home and call it a night," Murrow suggested hopefully. "The doctors said you're supposed to be taking it easy."

"I can't, sweetie," Stupenagel responded as she pulled the sling supporting her cast around to cover her fingers better. "But really, you go. I don't need an escort from here, and I promise to take a cab home when this is over."

"No way," Murrow replied. "Wherever you go, I go, too. Remember?"

"You're sweet, pookums," Stupenagel replied, and kissed him on the nose. "But haven't you ever heard the saying 'Fools rush in where angels fear to tread'? There's no reason for two fools to be rushing around on a night like this."

"Well, I'm a fool for love, so let's quit gabbing and get this over with," Murrow replied.

The pair made their way across the street to the entrance of the Staten Island Ferry. They paid the fare and boarded the ferry, which on a Sunday night was nearly deserted. Any other day or time, and there might have been a few hundred commuters with homes on the island or tourists aboard. In the past, the ferries had carried cars, but all that had changed on September 11, 2001. It was too easy to hide a bomb in a car or truck and so it had been closed to all but pedestrian traffic.

Stupenagel and Murrow were neither commuting nor sightseeing. Several hours earlier, while enjoying a quiet late Sunday afternoon snuggling in the Fifty-fifth Street loft, Stupenagel had received a call on her cell phone from a male whose accented voice she recognized as belonging to her Russian source, the employer of the late Gregory Karamazov. He wanted to know if she would meet with him.

How do I know this is legit? Stupenagel had asked. I'm getting a little sick of people trying to kill me.

The unexpected reply caused the caller to laugh bitterly. I don't blame you, he'd said. This is a dangerous business. I believe that you told Gregory, who by the way was my dear friend, that you were there on a blind date and he replied that you'd come to the right place. But I wouldn't blame you for having had enough. If you like, I can see if what I have to say would interest one of your competitors.

Ooooh, that's low, Stupenagel had replied. Okay, when and where?

The caller had not invited Murrow, but she'd made the mistake of admitting where she was going. Only afterward had she stopped to ponder if the sudden inability to lie to him-she'd always prided herself on being a fabulous liar when necessary-was yet one more sign of the strength of their relationship. He'd insisted on going and no amount of arguing or promising could change his mind, so she'd given in.

Now, as the ferry pulled away from the pier, she was having second thoughts again. You have no right to put him in danger, she admonished herself. But she had to admit, she was glad he was there, standing with her on the exposed stern of the ferry.

All the other passengers were inside, and Stupenagel was about to suggest that they go there, too-despite instructions to remain outside-and get out of the cold, when a tall, strongly built man suddenly appeared out of the shadows. She did a double take, for standing in front of her was a man who, except for the scars on his face and a patch over one eye, bore a marked resemblance to Butch Karp. She glanced at her boyfriend, but he gave no indication that he saw what she did. She shrugged it off as coincidence.

"It is very cold out here," the tall man said.

Here we go again with the corny codes, Stupenagel thought. It might have been funny in a Get Smart television spoof way, except it brought back painful memories of the Black Sea Cafe and the people who'd died there.

"Not as cold as it gets in Siberia," Stupenagel replied.

On the other side of the ferry, Nadya Malovo had worked her way close enough to hear the exchange and smiled. Nor as cold as the grave, Ivgeny my love, she thought, signaling her men to take up positions.

Her spy inside of the Karchovski crime family had called two hours earlier and told her about this meeting. The man had been trembling with fear when he spoke. He was well aware that the last traitor in the Karchovski family had died at the hands of Marlene Ciampi, during a failed attempt to kill father and son Karchovski. The best this traitor could expect if the Karchovskis got wise was a bullet. Or it might be much worse.

However, there was no telling what even a coward would do for the right enticements of sex and money. She'd had to provide both, even though the former had disgusted her. She much preferred sex with women, but it was a powerful tool to use with men. She'd known that since she was a young KGB agent assigned to a Red Army unit in Afghanistan commanded by then colonel Ivgeny Karchovski. He'd used her to relieve the stress of an unwinnable war as much as she'd used him to try to further her own ambitions. But that was more than twenty years ago, and a lot had changed since.

For one thing, Ivgeny Karchovski, a popular officer and recipient of the Soviet Red Star, the nation's highest military honor for courage, was now a crime boss in Brooklyn. But not just some ordinary gangster. Somehow, in a manner she had yet to discover, there was some connection between the Karchovskis and the New York district attorney Karp, who had proved to be a resilient enemy, as well as the man's wife, Marlene Ciampi.

Meanwhile, Malovo was convinced that it was the Karchovskis who had helped track down Andrew Kane at the hideout in Aspen. If not for an eleventh-hour warning from Jamys Kellagh, the plan to take the Pope hostage and blow up St. Patrick's Cathedral might have ended right then.

Malovo had cursed herself for letting her then lover and accomplice, the Palestinian terrorist Samira Azzam, plan the murder of the Karchovskis. Azzam preferred bombs, which Malovo knew had their place as a weapon of terror due to their psychological impact on civilians. But bombs were too inexact and impersonal for Malovo's tastes. She'd discovered in the KGB torture chambers of Kabul that she enjoyed killing on a one-to-one level. She preferred to look her prey in the eye when she shoved a knife into their heart, or put a bullet in their brain. That was the fate she planned for Ivgeny tonight. After that, it would be easy to kill his father, the old man Vladimir.

The icing on the cake would be the death of the reporter Stupenagel. The plot against the Pope would have been at least a partial public relations success-the object being to place the blame on Muslim Chechen nationalists. However, the reporter's stories had thrown the spotlight back on herself, as well as the "shadowy" Jamys Kellagh, and implied that Malovo worked for certain interests who were using Islamic terrorists as the bogeymen to justify the brutal occupation of oil-rich Muslim states in southwest Russia.

It was all true, of course, even if the reporter didn't know the half of it. The Soviet Union was gone, and Malovo didn't work for the Russian government anymore. At least not the "official" Russian government. However, there were certainly among her current employers highly placed and important men in that government, just as there were highly placed and important men among her employers in the Russian mob, as well as among the military and industry.

Their goal was to return to ruling their part of the world with an iron fist that would have made Joseph Stalin proud. But they entertained none of his ideals of a socialist state; their fist embraced greed and their own power over the state. It was a fist that would encourage terrorist acts to blind the already frightened Western world so that there would be no opposition to Russian occupation of the Muslim states and, when the time was right, the extermination of the "Muslim problem"-like the extermination of cockroaches.

Although not directly allied with them, Malovo's masters had found common ground with those for whom Jamys Kellagh worked. They, in turn, were affiliated with those groups in north and west Europe, as well as white supremacists in South Africa, who saw themselves in direct competition with Islamic theocracy for world domination, and who sought to stem the tide of brown-skinned subhumans who bred like rodents and threatened to overrun the planet.

Malovo agreed in principle with the philosophy; however, she left the intellectual debate to those better suited for it. On the other hand, her counterpart Kellagh was a true believer in the cause of the nameless organization that he dedicated his life to but would never discuss. Yet, he killed just as easily as she did.

Now they had a mutual problem, the reporter Stupenagel. Instead of universal condemnation of the Chechen nationalists for the attack on the Pope inside St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan, she'd exposed the plan as a ruse to use terrorism as a scapegoat for political gain. And it had only gotten worse.

Malovo didn't use that name in her day-to-day business, preferring the Chechen name Ajmaani, so she had been incensed that the reporter had been given her real name and that it had then appeared on the pages of newspapers. But identifying her as a Russian agent had caused shock waves in Moscow, just as publishing Jamys Kellagh's name with the implication that he had ties to U.S. law enforcement had put the heat on him.

Her capture inside of St. Patrick's had angered her employers nearly as much as the ultimate failure of the plot. They had been forced to pull more strings to get her "transferred" to Russian custody, exposing their position. The official story they gave in Moscow was that she'd actually been working undercover to expose the plot against the Pope but had been discovered and held hostage by the terrorists. However, Stupenagel's stories-forwarded to Moscow from the Russian embassy in New York-had put that story in question, and Malovo dared not return home.

It was obvious to Malovo and Kellagh and the people who controlled them that Stupenagel's anonymous federal law enforcement source was feeding her the information. But that was Kellagh's problem.

Her target was the unnamed source with access to high-level intelligence in the Russian government and army, as well as the Russian mob. And that source was Ivgeny Karchovski, which had been confirmed when the spy warned her about the meeting between Gregory Karamazov and Stupenagel. She'd become even more alarmed when she learned that the purpose of the meeting was to hand over a photograph of herself with Kellagh and Kane at the bar in Aspen.

With Kellagh's help in obtaining the plastic explosive, she'd quickly assembled the bomb and then arrived at the cafe in the company of an accomplice, to complete the picture of a couple having dinner before leaving on a trip. When she was sure that Stupenagel and Karamazov were occupied with their drinking, they left the restaurant. She'd then walked across the street and away from the direct line of flying glass and ball bearings before detonating the bomb.

The bomb was intended to kill everyone in the restaurant, and was to be followed by a fire that would incinerate paper, including photographs. She could hardly believe her eyes several days later when she read the story by Stupenagel, who had somehow survived.

In a rage that had terrified the Muslim terrorists with whom she was staying at a safe house in New Jersey-they believed that she was Chechen-she cursed the phenomenal luck that seemed to surround Karp, his family, and their associates. Even the hardened, cold-blooded killers with whom she worked were speaking in frightened whispers that Allah favored these infidels. They were particularly afraid of David Grale, the madman who was hunting them. He, too, had apparently survived repeated attempts to kill him, and the superstitious idiots were calling him a shayteen, a devil, and attributing supernatural powers to him and his subterranean army.

The supernatural crap was all nonsense, of course, Malovo told herself, but there was no denying the luck of her adversaries. And in the case of her former lover, Ivgeny, and the Ciampi woman, she was troubled by the fact that they were not only lucky, they were dangerous.

After getting the call from her spy in the Karchovski organization, she'd met with Kellagh to discuss her options. The spy had told her that Ivgeny would have only one bodyguard with him, and who knew when Ivgeny Karchovski would thus expose himself again? As for the reporter, it would look like she had stuck her nose too far into gang warfare.

Kellagh had called an accomplice working security on the ferries to have a trunk filled with weapons deposited belowdecks on the ferry. But he'd then had to rush off to a meeting with his employers. It seemed he was always running late, including when he was to attend to the death of the bookseller in December, which could have exposed the organization he worked for and their March plans.

Of course, Malovo was not immune to spies and traitors. After Kellagh left to deal with the bookseller, one of her own men had been caught calling the enemy and giving away their position. She'd cut the man's head off with her own knife and left it for her would-be captors to find, laughing as she watched them storm the building from another apartment across the street. She imagined them looking in the grocery bag she'd left in the middle of the floor with its grisly contents.

However, just in case the traitor had passed on more than her location, Malovo had Karchovski and Stupenagel followed. But her spy had been telling the truth-Ivgeny was traveling to meet the reporter with only his driver-slash-bodyguard, and even that would mean a surprise for her former lover. Stupenagel had brought only her boyfriend.

Now Malovo waited in the shadows for her men to get set, smiling as the reporter gave the response: "Not as cold as it gets in Siberia."

Karchovski held out his hand, which Stupenagel shook. "It is time to introduce myself," he said. "My name is Ivgeny. I believe you know who I am." He turned away and leaned over the rail of the ferry, facing the water, forcing Stupenagel and Murrow to do the same. He then spoke very quietly.

"I ask that you keep your voices low so that we can't be overheard," he said. "There are others listening. In fact, you are about to meet the subject of some of your stories, as well as the woman who planted the bomb in my restaurant. Her name is Nadya Malovo."

"You set me up?" Stupenagel hissed.

"Actually, the plan is to set up Malovo," he explained. "But I did need you, and myself, as bait. I will apologize later, but this woman is responsible for the death of many people, and unless she's stopped, the death of many more."

"This was the woman with the suitcase at the Black Sea Cafe?"

"Yes."

"Good. Put a cap in her for me," Stupenagel said. "What do you want us to do?"

"When the shooting starts, just get on the ground and try to avoid getting killed."

"Great," Murrow groaned. "Doesn't anybody around here want to live to be a hundred?"

Before anyone could answer, a woman spoke behind them. "Put your hands in the air, Ivgeny, and tell your man to obey. The other two as well."

The party did as told and turned slowly to face Malovo. She was accompanied by several men, who spread out around them but remained out of earshot. She smiled and pointed her gun from Ivgeny to Stupenagel to Murrow. "Who should I shoot first?"

"Wait," Karchovski said. "I want to give you a chance to surrender before there is any more bloodshed."

Malovo opened her mouth in surprise and then started to laugh. "Ah, Ivgeny, you haven't changed," she said. "A killer with a sense of humor, and one who actually places a premium on life."

"Unlike you, I take no pleasure in destroying," Karchovski replied. "Do you really think your bosses' use of terrorism will cow the world into giving them a free hand?"

Malovo shrugged. "Why not? Most people are sheep, especially in the West, where they are so fat and happy they think that everything will be okay if you talk nicely to people who believe that God has appointed them to convert infidels or put them to the sword. You refuse to see that by being soft, the current governments of the West and Russia are allowing the lowest common denominator-the illiterate, the filthy, the plague of Africans, Asians, Arabs, and Latins-to inherit a world built by their superiors."

"So you would stoop to killing thousands of innocent people to get the rest to place their lives in your hands instead?" Karchovski asked.

"Yes. Unless they are afraid, they will cling to their 'rights' and hamper the efforts of more intelligent people who are trying to protect them from that plague," Malovo scoffed. "But enough of this. I didn't come here to debate. I came here to kill you and this stupid woman. Now, in memory of our romance in Kabul, I'll let you choose who dies first."

"And I'll give you one last chance to lay down your weapons," Karchovski replied. "You are surrounded."

"What sort of fool do you think I am?" Malovo sneered. "My men are in complete control of this ferry. At this moment, they are holding the captain, the crew, and the other passengers captive. Watch, I will even stop the boat."

Smiling, Malovo waved a hand over her head. She waited for the engines to shut down, but instead the ferry continued to proceed across the water as normal. She scowled and looked up to where her man was supposed to be watching for her signal. He was there, and she angrily signaled again. But instead of the expected response, he plunged forward over the rail and onto the deck of the ferry.

The sentinel was replaced by a tall, thin man who appeared to be wearing a robe. His pale face glowed yellow in the ferry's running lights, which gave him a ghostly appearance that shook the men with Malovo. "Shayteen," one of them mumbled in fear.

Of the people standing on the deck, only Ivgeny was not surprised to see David Grale peering down at them.

After the restaurant bombing, the Karchovskis had quickly dismissed the idea that some other Russian gang was behind the attack. Gangsters were first and foremost businessmen. While friction and territory could lead to killings, even outright warfare, they all knew that it was bad for business. It attracted the police and put a stop to normal transactions. And usually, there was some indication-threats or reports of hostility-that preceded violence.

It led the Karchovskis to conclude that they had another mole within their organization. From there it had been easy to figure out who. In fact, the traitor was the man standing next to him, his bodyguard. How Malovo had turned him, Ivgeny did not care. In fact, in one way, he owed the man his thanks for giving him this opportunity to kill the woman who had tried to murder him and his father. Yet, it had been all he could do not to strangle the traitor with his own hands when he thought about the death of his friend Gregory, with whom he'd served in Afghanistan, and the other innocent people who died in the cafe.

The traitor had been fed the information about the meeting with Ariadne Stupenagel and then left alone to contact Malovo. Ivgeny had felt a twinge of remorse for exposing the reporter, and unexpectedly her boyfriend, to danger, but he knew that the bait had to be too tempting or the rat might smell the trap.

Even then, there were great risks involved. Malovo might have tried to plant a bomb on the ferry, but he dismissed this, knowing her preferences, and counted on her wanting to kill him herself up close.

He'd also had to leave his other men behind and bring only the traitor. Where there was one rat, there might have been another who might have warned Malovo of a trap. However, he'd arranged for backup by having a go-between contact Grale with his plan.

Grale was something of a business associate. The mad monk's network of street people were spread throughout Manhattan, and to a lesser degree the other boroughs, and provided excellent intelligence. In exchange, Grale sought medical supplies, weapons, and food for his followers. The arrangement worked well, though even his own men, as tough as they were, didn't like dealing with Grale and his so-called Mole People. It was an added bonus that he and Grale had discovered that they had mutual enemies.

The appearance now of Grale at the railing above froze Malovo for an instant. But she was trained to deal with the unexpected and whirled to shoot Karchovski. However, he, too, was a trained fighter and knocked the gun from her hand with a telescoping baton he'd had up his sleeve.

Stupenagel and Murrow dove to the deck just as Malovo's men were suddenly overwhelmed by robed fighters who'd appeared like wraiths out of the shadows. Terrified, the Muslims didn't put up much of a fight, screaming, "Shayteen! Shayteen!" before being cut down.

Karchovski moved in to follow up his advantage and narrowly missed being eviscerated by a palm knife that appeared in Malovo's hand. He jumped back in the last instant and flipped open a butterfly knife that he carried.

"Put down the knife, Nadya," Karchovski ordered as they circled each other. "Your men are dead or captured. It's your decision to live or die."

Malovo laughed but the sound was bitter and harsh. "What? And submit to your tender mercies? I don't suppose you would be turning me over to the U.S. or Russian government?"

Karchovski shook his head grimly. "No, that mistake will not happen again. But your death will be as painless as I can make it after I have from you what I want to know."

Suddenly, a speedboat roared out of the dark and pulled alongside the ferry. A spotlight from the boat picked out Karchovski and Malovo, and then someone opened fire.

Ivgeny dove to his right just in time to avoid a bullet that rang off the metal hull. He looked up to see Malovo activate a red light on her shoulder harness and then run for the side of the ferry, diving into the black waters.

Cursing, Karchovski jumped up and ran to the rail. But the speedboat and the red light that bobbed in the wake of the ferry were already far behind. He picked up Malovo's gun and fired until it was empty, then heaved it at the escaping woman in frustration. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number. He spoke rapidly in Russian, then flipped it shut.

With Stupenagel and Murrow trailing him, he ran up to the bridge, where the captain and his crew stood in stunned silence. Two terrorists in black lay dead on the ground, the work of Grale's men.

"I apologize for all of this," Karchovski told the captain. "But I need you to stop the ferry. I have a boat picking me up on your port side in a moment."

The captain looked down at the dead men. "All engines stop," he told his crew, then turned back to Karchovski. "I guess we owe you thanks for saving us from these two. But who are you people?"

"It's not important," Karchovski said. "Please allow me to disembark before you get under way again." With that, he took off running, again with Stupenagel and Murrow on his heels.

They reached the stern on the port side just as a motorboat was pulling alongside. "I'm sorry," Karchovski said to Stupenagel as Grale and a half dozen of his fighters climbed down into the motorboat. "You are welcome to join us in case you don't want to answer questions from the authorities."

"I think that's a good idea," Stupenagel said. "And maybe you have time for a few questions?"

"Some other day, perhaps," Karchovski said. "But we'll drop you back at Battery Park."

"What about me, boss?" asked Karchovski's bodyguard, who'd remained standing on the stern of the ferry with two of Grale's men.

Ivgeny turned to the man, his eyes blazing with anger. "What about you, traitor?"

Before the bodyguard could respond, Grale nodded to his men. One struck the bodyguard on the back of his head with a blackjack, knocking him to the ground.

"Tie his hands and feet," Ivgeny instructed.

They did as told, then hauled the man to his feet. "Please, Mr. Karchovski, why are you doing this?" The man started to cry.

Karchovski, however, was unmoved. "My only regret is that I do not have the time to deal with you properly," he said, and spit in the man's face. "But this is for my friend Gregory, and the others whose blood is on your head."

"No, I did nothing, I swear to you," the bodyguard blubbered as Karchovski grabbed him by the lapels of his coat.

"Tell that to the fish," Karchovski replied, and launched the man over the side of the ferry. Weighed down by his clothes and a bulletproof vest, the man kicked violently in an attempt to keep his mouth above water. He was still kicking, his eyes wide with terror, as he slipped beneath the surface and disappeared into the depths.

The gangster leader turned to Stupenagel and Murrow. "You will forget that you saw that, no?"

"No," Murrow said, and was nudged in the ribs by Stupenagel. "I mean yes. Never saw a thing. Besides, I believe these are New Jersey waters. No jurisdiction."

"Honey bunny," Stupenagel said. "Now would be a good time to be quiet."

"Right."

Ivgeny Karchovski smiled and shook his head. He would never understand these Americans and their sense of humor. "You have nothing to fear from me," he said. "But so you know, he was the man who betrayed you and all the other people at the Black Sea Cafe."

"Good riddance to bad trash, then," Stupenagel said.

"Ditto," Murrow agreed.

"Then please, climb down," Karchovski said.

A few minutes later, Murrow and Stupenagel were standing on the dock at Battery Park, watching Karchovski's speedboat roar into the darkness. Murrow sighed. "Well, that was exciting," he said. "I guess you'll have another story on the front page."

Ariadne tousled his hair. "You are one cool cookie, Gilbert my love. Let's go home…I've a deadline to make."