The Final Reckoning

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Jay Sherrill would have admitted it to no one, not even his mother – her least of all – but today he was feeling his inexperience. Ever since his meeting with the Commissioner he had had the novel sensation of a conundrum that might exceed even his expensively educated powers of understanding. If it were simply a matter of logic, he was confident that no problem could defeat him. But this required something more than deductive reasoning, more than what Chuck Riley would doubtless call, adopting his best Boss Hogg accent, ‘book-learnin'.’

At least Sherrill had reached the stage of knowing what he did not know. And this knowledge, he concluded, was not taught at Harvard or anywhere else. It was acquired over years, accreted like the lichen on an ancient stone. It was what the older men in the New York Police Department, those he could regard with condescension in every other context, already had and what he, unavoidably, lacked. It was the advantage of dumb chronology, years on the clock. He would have it eventually but right now he was defeated by it.

He had followed the Commissioner's cue and made contact with the NYPD Intelligence Division. He had asked to see those involved in the surveillance operation of Gerald Merton. He had heard nothing back. He called again, adding this time that his need was urgent since it related to an ongoing criminal investigation designated as the highest possible priority by the Commissioner himself. No one returned his call.

He had weighed his options, including alerting Riley to this foot-dragging by a section of his own force, but ruled that out: what could look worse than a Harvard boy running to Daddy because the tough kids wouldn't play with him? It would get around, confirming every prejudice he already knew existed against him.

And then, this morning at 8.30am, the call had come. The head of the Intelligence Division, Stephen Lake, would see him at 10am. It made no sense. Sherrill had made a request at the operational level; he wanted to see an officer – or did Intel Division call them agents? – from the field, at most a unit commander, but someone involved in the hands-on work of monitoring the Russian and subsequently tailing Merton. That request had apparently been refused. Instead he was due to see the man at the very top.

This too he would not have admitted to anyone, but he was nervous. Lake had been top brass at the Central Intelligence Agency, a wholly political appointment made by the city after 9/11, when New York decided it could no longer rely on the federal authorities and had better make its own arrangements. Sherrill had done an archive search of the New York Times website that morning, reading up on the Intel Division and on Lake. Already it had up to a thousand officers at its disposal, a force within the forty-thousand-strong force of the NYPD itself. By comparison, the FBI, with just ten thousand agents to cover the entire United States, looked like minnows. The Feds resented them, of course; and the Times had reported a slew of complaints from civil liberties groups complaining that the Intel Division was not catching foreign terrorists but watching domestic political activists, bugging the phone calls and surveilling the homes of US citizens. It only added to the unfamiliar sensation now brewing inside Jay Sherrill, that he was badly out of his depth.

He knew how to interview cops, knew their foibles, their vanities, their sentimental weaknesses. But Lake had never been a cop. He was more like a politician, a veteran player of the Washington game. Why on earth had he taken this meeting? What message was he sending?

Sherrill had ten more minutes to wrestle with that question, sitting in the waiting area of the office of the man formally titled Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence. He knew this manoeuvre all too well: keep a man waiting, remind him who comes where in the hierarchy. Jay Sherrill's response in this situation – a refusal to flick through any of the papers or magazines on the table in the reception area in favour of simply staring straight ahead – sent a message of his own: ‘You are wasting my time and I resent it.’

At last a grey-faced secretary gestured for Sherrill to come forward. He went through two successive doors, before being shown into an office which he instantly assessed as being slightly larger than the Commissioner's.

Lake was short by alpha male standards, five ten at most. His silver-grey hair was cut close and his eyes were chilly. He rose slightly out of his chair to acknowledge the detective's arrival, extended a hand, then began speaking even before Jay had sat down.

‘So what is it we can help you with, Detective?’

‘Well, sir, I really did not mean to trouble you with this. It's a matter way below-’

‘What, my pay grade, Detective?’ There was a mirthless smile. ‘Why don't you let me be the judge of that? What are the questions you have for this department?’

‘Sir, the UN security force opened fire on Gerald Merton at 8.51am yesterday. Two minutes earlier, the Watch Commander of that force had received a warning from his liaison within NYPD, offering a description of a terror suspect said to be about to enter the United Nations compound. It was on the basis of that description – for which Gerald Merton offered a complete match – that the UN officer opened fire.’ He knew this account would have more punch if he added the words, ‘thereby killing an innocent old man,’ but he could not bring himself to do it. In spite of the indifference shown by the Commissioner, to Sherrill's mind the gun and fingerprints found in Merton's room remained the most compelling evidence in the case.

Lake rubbed his chin, apparently deep in thought. ‘I see,’ he said at last. ‘And your question to me is what exactly?’

Sherrill could see that Lake was going to extend not the slightest help.

‘I want to know how the NYPD was in a position to pass on what could only be live intelligence to the UNSF, sir.’

‘Live intelligence? Are you sure you're not getting a little ahead of yourself here, Detective? Is intelligence an expertise of yours?’

Sherrill could feel a burning sensation in his cheeks; one he desperately hoped did not manifest itself. He tried to calm himself, to remember that this tactic of intimidation – the invocation of specialist knowledge – was just that, a tactic. ‘I don't think it requires any great expertise, sir. Just as it would have required no great expertise to see that Gerald Merton was a man in his mid-seventies – hardly the profile for a terrorist.’

At that, Lake's eyes turned to steel. ‘There are two answers to that, Mr Sherrill: the official one and the unofficial one. The official one is that this department never comments on operational matters, lest we compromise those working in the field to protect the great city of New York and, with it, the entire United States.’

‘Of course, sir.’ Sherrill wondered if he was about to make some headway. ‘And what's the unofficial one?’

‘We may have had our eye on the UN for a while, with evidence of a ticking time-bomb over there. Or we may not. But this was one hundred per cent a fuck-up by the Keystone Kops at UN Plaza. You try to roll the blame ball over to this department for that and you better make sure you're not in the path of travel. Because if you are, I will personally make sure that it crushes you into the ground so hard you'll think yourself lucky if you end up writing out parking tickets in Trenton, do I make myself clear, Detective?’

Sherrill swallowed hard. ‘Doesn't this count as coercion of a law enforcement officer, sir?’

‘Save it for the Kennedy School, Detective. The only words I have uttered to you in this meeting are as follows: that this department never comments on operational matters, lest we compromise those working in the field to protect the great city of New York and, with it, the entire United States. Any other words imagined by you will be denied by me. I will swear an affidavit to that effect and submit it to any court – along, of course, with a copy of your medical records showing your past history of mental illness.’

Jay Sherrill could feel the wind exiting his stomach as surely as if he had been punched. He barely managed to whisper the words, ‘What are you talking about?’

Stephen Lake looked down at a single sheet of paper he now held between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Seems, Mr Sherrill, that you once sought counselling for depression. Is that compatible with the role of a first grade detective in the New York Police Department? Hmm, I can't recall. Perhaps we should just check with the Chief of Detectives.’ He reached for his telephone and began punching the keypad.

‘No!’

‘What is it, Detective?’

‘It was years ago; I was a student! My brother had just died!’

‘My condolences. I'm sure the human resources department of the NYPD would have been real sympathetic when you applied to be a fast track, high-flying, big swinging dick detective. Except, for some reason, you forgot to share that piece of information with them, didn't you? I've got your form right here in front of me.’ He reached for another document. ‘“Have you ever sought professional help for a mental health problem, including but not confined to…” blah, blah, blah, oh there it is, “depression”? And here's the little check box you've marked with an X and guess which one it is. It couldn't be clearer. N-O spells no. That counts as a lie in my book. Might even count as perjury. Remind me to check that with a lawyer.’ He threw the paper down onto the desk and fixed Jay Sherrill with a fierce stare. ‘In case I haven't made myself clear, Detective, this is what I'm saying to you. You go take your blame ball and roll it onto someone else's yard – because this one's full of land mines and one of them will blow you right out of the sky. I guarantee it.’