Solomon's Gold

CHAPTER 51

The cab dropped them off across the street from the address on the order slip. They were in the heart of the Lower East Side. The building was a red brick tenement that had been built sometime around the end of the nineteenth century. A rusty fire escape climbed up one side of the building. The bricks were dark with years of city grime. A sign in a front window advertised an apartment for rent.

"You think these guys might actually be in there?" Ronnie asked.

"It's worth a shot," Nick said.

"Why would they use a real ID?" Lamont asked.

"They wouldn't," Nick said. "But this whole thing smells like a long-term government op. They had to have good IDs to rent a van. The woman at the museum was in place for months. Maybe an apartment was provided for them. Someone could have made up ID's to go with it."

"If they did, it was a pretty stupid mistake," Ronnie said.

"Iran is like everywhere else. Their intelligence agency is a huge bureaucracy. Anything's possible in a bureaucracy. I've seen Langley make dumb mistakes in the field. Why should Iran be any different?"

"How do you want to play it?" Ronnie said.

"We don't know what apartment they're in. We'll find the manager."

"If this dump has one," Ronnie said.

"There has to be someone to keep everything working."

They climbed a set of concrete steps to the entrance. The outside door opened into an entry foyer with brass mailboxes and doorbells. The floor of the entry was made of small black and white tiles in a check pattern. The foyer smelled faintly of urine.

Nick tried a second door leading into the building. It was locked.

"There's a bell marked manager," Selena said.

Nick pressed it. Next to the bells was a brass plate with a speaker grill. A voice crackled from the unit.

"Who is it?"

"You the manager?"

"Who wants to know?"

Nick looked at the others and shrugged.

"We're interested in the apartment for rent."

The lock on the inner door buzzed. Ronnie pushed it open.

A stale odor of neglect greeted them inside. They stood in a hallway that ran across the front of the building. To their left, a set of worn stairs climbed to the upper floors.

"No elevator," Lamont said. "This place has a lot of class."

Down the hall, a door opened and a man came out. He wore stained coveralls and a blue work shirt. He was probably sixty years old, but it was hard to tell. His eyes were watery brown, tired. His hair was streaked with gray, his face worn down by life. He might've been handsome, once. He smelled faintly of alcohol.

"You want to see the apartment?"

Nick showed his badge. "We're not here for that."

The man sighed. "Cops."

"What's your name?"

"Benny. Everyone calls me Benny."

"Okay, Benny. You're not in any trouble. We're looking for someone we think is living here," Nick said.

He took out the FBI drawings and showed them to the manager.

"Do you recognize these men?"

"That one's pretty good," the manager said. He pointed at the same picture Niko had recognized at the sign shop. "The others, not so much, but yeah, I recognize them. They're in unit 5 D."

"Are they home now?"

"How would I know? People come, they go, I don't see them. Those three keep to themselves."

"Okay. I need a key to that apartment."

"You got a warrant?"

"Look," Nick said. "You make us go back and get a warrant, it will piss me off. How about we do it the easy way?"

He held up a twenty dollar bill.

Benny took the twenty. "I'll get it."

He went back inside his unit for the key.

"What a sad looking man," Selena said. "I wonder how he ended up here?"

"He's a drinker," Ronnie said. "He's lucky he's got a job."

Benny came back down the hall and handed Nick the key.

"Fifth floor, on the left, all the way down."

"We'll bring the key back when we're done."

"Yeah."

They went up the stairs until they reached the fourth floor. Nick stopped.

"If nobody's home, we look for whatever we can find. If they're inside, this could go south in a hurry. Don't mess around, but try not to kill everybody. We need information."

He looked at Selena. "I want you outside, in the hall. You don't come in until it's clear."

"Nick…"

"Just do it."

Selena was about to argue with him, but the way he looked at her told her it wouldn't do any good.

"All right."

"Let's go," Nick said.

They drew weapons and climbed up the last flight. At the top landing, Nick glanced right and left into the hall.

"Hall's clear."

They moved in single file, keeping against the wall. They passed the doors of two units. The sound of a television came from one of them. They reached the end of the hall and the door to 5 D.

Nick inserted the key in the lock, held up three fingers, and counted down.

Three. Two. One.

Nick turned the key, reached for the knob, and opened the door.

Inside the apartment, Hamid sat at the kitchen table, putting the finishing touches on his suicide vest. It was a little different from the traditional vest. The favorite design used a dozen or more sticks of explosives wired to a detonator or a dead man switch. It was bulky and heavy, hung from straps over the shoulders, and required a fair amount of clothing around it to conceal the shape. That was one reason why women were so popular in the Middle East as suicide bombers. The traditional burqas they wore were perfect for concealing the bomb.

The one Hamid was working on was improvised. It would be strapped around his chest with duct tape. Hamid had flattened a kilo of Semtex and placed it inside a cloth grocery bag. The bag made a perfect container for the bomb. He'd added nails and tacks to the package. When the Semtex detonated, a cloud of sharp metal would fly in all directions, ripping into anyone unfortunate enough to be in the area.

An empty glass and a loaded Glock.45 lay on the table. Amin was in the bathroom, dealing with his upset bowels. Dayoud had gone out to a neighborhood store to buy orange juice. No one was planning on eating dinner. Dinner would be a pill, designed by the pharmacological geniuses in Tehran. It created a high that combined a feeling of euphoria with one of invincibility.

Hamid smiled. He would go to Paradise happy, ready to prostate himself at the feet of Allah. He wondered what the face of God would look like.

He heard the key turn in the door.

"Dayoud," he called. "About time."

The door slammed open.

Nick saw Hamid sitting at the table and the gun next to him.

"Freeze!" he yelled.

Hamid saw the big American and his gun and didn't think about what to do. He grabbed the Glock and brought it up. He'd almost made it before Nick shot him.

In the bathroom, Amin had just pulled up his trousers. He was buckling his belt when he heard the roar of Nick's pistol.

The bathroom door burst inward and knocked him back onto the toilet. A fierce looking man with a terrible scar across his face pointed a pistol at Amin's head.

"Don't move, mother fucker."

One flight below, Dayoud was coming up the stairs. He heard the gunfire from above and knew what it meant. He dropped the bag with the juice on the steps. He ran back down, left the building and quickly walked away. In a minute he had turned the corner. He hailed a cab and was gone.

"Selena, it's clear," Nick called. "Come on in. Ronnie, you stand out in the hall. Keep the civilians away. Keep your pistol out of sight and hold up your badge when you see the cops coming. They don't like guns."

Selena took in the scene. Hamid's body lay by an overturned chair. His blood was spreading out over the worn linoleum floor. The room stank of gunpowder and death. Lamont came out of the bathroom with Amin. Amin had his hands on his head. Lamont's pistol was pressed up against his skull.

Nick said, "Selena, there's duct tape on that table. Help Lamont tie that guy up. I'm going to call Harker."

"Lie face down on the floor, asshole," Lamont said.

"There is blood there," Amin protested.

"Tough shit. Lie down. You want me to shoot you?"

Amin lay down in Hamid's blood.

"Put your hands behind your back."

Amin did as he was told. Lamont kept his pistol on him while Selena tore a strip from the roll of tape. She wrapped it around Amin's wrists and bound them together. She got up and began looking around the apartment.

Nick had Harker on the phone.

"We've got two of them. I don't know where the third guy is."

"Did you take them alive?"

"One of them wanted to be a hero, but the other one is alive and well. We didn't even have to shoot him."

"You're sure it's them?"

"Aside from the fact that one of them is a dead ringer for one of those FBI pictures, the Semtex and detonators on the kitchen table clinches it. The dead guy was making a bomb or a suicide vest."

"Nick." It was Selena.

"Director, hold on. Selena's found something."

She came over with the map Dayoud had marked.

"There are three areas circled in red," she said. "I think they're targets."

"Director, there's a map. They were planning on hitting three more targets."

He looked at the map.

"One of them is Penn Station," Nick said. "One is in the theater district, and the last one is Times Square."

"All right," Elizabeth said. "Good work."

"Nick," Ronnie called. "The cops are here."

Nick could hear Ronnie talking to someone outside.

"Director, NYPD is here. They're going to be upset. You'd better make some calls."

"I'll call you back," Elizabeth said.