Putin's Gambit

11

Walsh had found it comforting to talk with the homeless vet. It made him feel like he was doing something proactive. He had to look at Charlie with a sideways glance. This was all beyond him. He had never been involved in any sort of cloak-and-dagger activity. He had always been a financial guy, even in the marines. And now a homeless Vietnam vet was telling him how he would distract the man watching in front of Walsh’s apartment, giving Walsh time to slip into the building. All it required was Walsh sneaking behind the first building on the block and coming up between that building and his own. Then, when Charlie distracted the man in the car, Walsh could slide into his apartment unnoticed.

He had a hundred questions. First and foremost, how would Charlie distract him? Then how would he get back out without being seen? What would happen if he was caught? Was the man dangerous? Did he look like a cop? Instead, he just stared at Charlie and mumbled, “Okay.”

Walsh had to scale a short, decorative fence to get behind the building on the corner. He felt obvious and vulnerable walking through someone else’s backyard, but no one seemed to notice him or look out a window. There was a gate at the other side, one he had seen from his own building. He walked through it and found himself in the shadows between the two buildings, looking almost directly at the Dodge parked on the side of the road. The sounds of the earlier riots seem to drift lightly on the breeze, but he could hear everything on the street, including Charlie as he slowly approached the car.

Walsh’s heart rate started to climb, and for the first time he realized he was also worried about Charlie’s safety. What if this guy did something to the old man? Walsh would have to take action. He hoped he was prepared.

He crept up to the corner of the building and now could see and hear Charlie as he approached the man in the car and had his full attention. Walsh was afraid the man would notice him as he stepped onto the sidewalk and made a few quick steps to the stairs leading up to his building.

He heard Charlie say, “Hello, sir. I was wondering if you had some spare change.” Charlie approached him as if he had some disability, hunched over and dragging his right leg behind him.

The man mumbled something hostile back toward Charlie.

The old vet said, “That’s no way to talk to a senior citizen.” And then, with startling speed, Charlie lurched toward the man, striking him across the chin and slamming his head hard into the dash of the Dodge Charger. He pulled the man back upright, and his head lulled to the right of the seat. Charlie turned and gave Walsh a thumbs-up.

Stunned by what he had witnessed, Walsh darted around the corner and rushed up the stairs.

Joseph Katazin was a little concerned. He’d lost track of Walsh. While the man was in custody he wasn’t worried about it, but now he’d escaped from the Seventh Precinct, and the New York cops couldn’t care less. They had plenty of problems on their hands with the chaos that Katazin had helped spread.

His contacts were associated with the Seventh Precinct, not the FBI. He knew the federal agents would be looking for Walsh, but even they would be more concerned about the lone wolf terror attacks that were occurring across the country. He could imagine a supervisor yelling at the agent who wanted to look for Walsh when the world was falling down around them. The FBI really wasn’t any different than any other police agency around the world. Once you understood how they operated they weren’t that hard to outsmart.

Katazin had used his own small army of associates to spread out and look for Walsh. None of them knew exactly what was going on, and that was the point. He didn’t trust any of them to keep their mouths shut if they were arrested for some reason. They were simply thugs used by the Russian mafia and available for hire whenever Katazin needed them. There really weren’t that many places he thought Walsh would go, but he had people waiting at all of them while he headed to the most obvious.

Walsh was starting to annoy him. Katazin would enjoy questioning him roughly and then dumping him in the East River. By the time anyone linked him to all the other things that were going on, the world would have a very different look.

Walsh had been so nervous he could barely fit the key into the lock of his loose wooden door. Finally he managed to open the door silently and stood in the doorway, peering into the room. His eyes scanned from one corner to the other even though he had no idea what he was looking for. He just didn’t need another surprise. If there was someone out front, there might be someone inside. He had to risk it. He stepped in quickly, ready to leap back out if necessary. It wasn’t. The room was quiet and empty of other humans.

The apartment was a joke except for the comfortable bed. It was essentially a bedroom that had been cut into two rooms, plus a tiny bathroom and a kitchen that consisted of a dorm refrigerator and toaster oven. In other cities it would be considered a slum. The small closet, which was just a recess in the wall, held four blue suits. The main thing distinguishing them was the manufacturer, and all of them were knock-offs. What was wrong with him? Was he color-blind? Or had he just fallen into the corporate stereotype of wearing a blue suit with a different tie every day?

For no apparent reason he changed from the blue pants he was wearing into a different set of blue pants. He changed shirts as well, but decided not to grab a coat. He felt more casual having an untucked white shirt hanging over his dark blue pants.

Walsh caught a quick glimpse of himself in the mirror as he passed the open bathroom door. He thought for the first time about having cops looking for him. He was an escaped fugitive even if he was never officially charged. He thought about how Mike Rosenberg had once told him that few people actually looked at faces during the day, and that was how people on most-wanted lists remained free for so long. Just the same, Walsh decided he could change his look a little.

He took a minute to step up to the mirror, grab his electric grooming razor, and quickly shave the top of his head. After a remarkably short time he had given himself a classic male-pattern bald spot, with the sides trimmed back a little as well. He used a twin-bladed razor to finish up.

When he had finished he looked fifteen years older.

On his way out, he looked through one of the three drawers on the cabinet in the kitchen and found his envelope with six hundred dollars in cash, his current life savings. He also grabbed Alena’s extra debit card and a pair of low-power “cheater” reading glasses he had found he needed more and more frequently. Once he put them on, in combination with his homemade bald spot, he looked completely different.

He didn’t want to linger, even though he’d have liked to turn on the TV and see what was happening in the financial district. It was late afternoon, and there were still police sirens wailing in the distance.

He locked the apartment on the way out and paused before he stepped out onto the stairs. He looked through the glass in the doors and saw Charlie still standing casually by the Dodge. He came out the door, saw the driver slumped over in the front seat, and rushed over to the homeless army vet.

As Walsh approached, Charlie looked up. Then he grinned and said, “Nice look. Very smart.”

Walsh looked at the unconscious man and said, “Charlie, what the hell? I thought you were going to distract him.”

“He is distracted. His concussion has distracted him.”

“I sure hope he was watching my apartment and not waiting for his girlfriend.”

“I’m pretty sure he was watching your apartment.”

“How do you know?”

Charlie held up a photograph of Walsh. It looked like it had been taken in the last few weeks when he was leaving his office. It was from a distance, but it was still clearly him.

Walsh said, “Do you have anything else?”

Charlie handed him a 9 mm Beretta, a cell phone, and a wallet. “I kept the cash in his wallet. I figured I earned that. The rest might be information you need.”

Walsh didn’t argue. He took the gun and shoved it in his belt, then pulled the shirt over it. He looked at the wallet for a moment and saw the guy’s name: Serge Blattkoff. He looked up at Charlie. “A Russian.”

“I never trusted those bastards.”

Mike Rosenberg had gone all the way out to his car in the headquarters parking lot and tried calling his friend Derek Walsh, but he got no answer on the cell phone. Then he read a brief that said Derek was a suspect in the money transfer that started much of the chaos going on right now. His unit was designed to get a big picture of what was going on in the world. That gave him access to a lot of files and a lot of information, but he wasn’t an expert on any of it. He was pretty good at tracking down the source of money and the original source of some communications. But his forte was gaining a view of the big picture. He decided it wouldn’t help him or Walsh if he let it slip that they were friends. Right now no one was paying much attention to the banker in New York who was being questioned by the FBI. Then he read another brief that came over the computer. It was saying Walsh had escaped from custody and was loose somewhere in New York. With the growing violence and several terror attacks around Manhattan, very few people cared about a banker who managed to escape from the FBI.

Rosenberg was worried, and he hoped no one would make a connection between his phone and Walsh’s. God knew there were enough calls between them. Until someone said something, he intended to look into it more closely and see what he could find out. There was no way Derek Walsh was ever involved in something illegal; something stupid, maybe, especially if it involved a woman, but illegal, never.

The first thing he did was find an analyst to talk to about the money transfer that had gone from Thomas Brothers Financial to a bank in Switzerland. He wanted to know who had access to that account and see what he could find out from there.

There was no way he’d let a friend like Derek Walsh swing on the gallows for something he never did.

Walsh couldn’t believe the change in Charlie. He no longer acted like a harmless, burned-out homeless guy but had reverted to his military background and taken charge. He seemed to have no remorse for the way he handled the Russian. In fact, it was Charlie who led Walsh away from the unconscious man without a second thought.

Walsh said, “I need to get all this straightened out. I need to get a lawyer.”

Charlie snapped his head toward him as they walked along Hudson Street. “You can’t be serious? After the shit you told me has gone down today, you think anyone is going to give you a chance in court? The whole system is fixed anyway. Trust me, I’ve been through it enough times. What you need is the basics: food, rest, and resupply.”

This was something Walsh understood: basic military strategy.

Walsh said, “My girlfriend lives near the Columbia campus. I need to get over to her.”

“Uptown? The West Side? No way. Too far. Too many cops.”

They walked in silence for a few moments. Then Charlie said, “What’s your girlfriend’s name?”

“Alena.”

“She Mexican?”

“No, it’s short for Magdalena. She’s from Greece.”

“That don’t sound like a Greek name.”

“Her mom was from Sweden. She named her, and that’s where she gets her fair skin and blond hair.”

“Where is her dad from?”

“Greece. She doesn’t talk about him much. Her folks are divorced.”

Charlie mumbled, “Too many foreigners in your life. We need to find shelter close by.” After looking both ways and making sure they were still safe, Charlie said, “Can you trust her?”

“Of course. We’ve been dating for almost a year, and I knew her a year before that.”

“The cops can make people do crazy shit.”

Walsh didn’t know why he felt he had to defend Alena, but he dug in his pocket and pulled out her debit card. “She gave me this, and she has more money than me.”

Charlie nodded, seemingly satisfied. “People don’t fool with their money. If she gave you access to her account, she’s okay.”

Walsh would have loved to spend the night in Alena’s arms, but Charlie was right; he couldn’t risk traveling across town. He’d wait till tomorrow and slip by to see her. Right now Charlie was making sense.

“Any ideas where we might stay for the night?”

Charlie gave him a sly grin and said, “We keep walking until Hudson meets Bleecker Street and there’s a small shelter for homeless people. You gotta get there early to get a bed, but the woman who runs the place is great. No one has to sign in or say who they are. The only rule is you don’t cause any trouble. And believe me, if someone causes trouble, other people staying there take care of it. She’ll give us a hot meal, and you can zonk out for a few hours. In the morning you’ll have a better idea of what you need to do.”

It was hard for Walsh to argue with common sense and military doctrine. He wondered how Charlie had become homeless if he had such a good head on his shoulders. The training men and women received in the military tended to shine through in the darkest hours.