We are happy to include here a chapter of Nelson DeMille’s next novel, THE LION’S GAME, which will be published soon by Warner Books. The main character in THE LION’S GAME is John Corey, NYPD, who first appeared in Nelson DeMille’s bestseller, PLUM ISLAND.
You’d think that anyone who’d been capped three times and almost became an organ donor would try to avoid dangerous situations in the future. But, no, I must have this unconscious wish to take myself out of the gene pool or something.
Anyway, I’m John Corey, formerly of the NYPD, now working as a Special Contract Agent for the Anti- Terrorist Task Force. I was sitting in the back of a yellow cab on my way from Twenty-Six Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan to John F. Kennedy International Airport. The trip meter was spinning like an out-of-control one-armed bandit, and I wondered if I had enough bucks to pay the Pakistani suicide driver behind the wheel.
I still couldn’t get used to the fact that the Feds would actually reimburse me for things like a fifty-buck cab ride. Even in my former exalted position as an NYPD homicide detective, the department questioned twenty-five- cent phone calls.
It was a nice spring day, a Saturday, moderate traffic on the Belt Parkway, late afternoon, and seagulls from a nearby landfill—formerly known as a garbage dump—were crapping on the taxi’s windshield. I love spring.
I wasn’t headed off on vacation or anything like that—I was reporting for work with the Anti-Terrorist Task Force. This is sort of a weird organization that not too many people know about, which is just as well. The ATTF is divided into sections which focus on specific bunches of troublemakers and bomb chuckers, like the Irish Republican Army, Puerto Rican Independence Movement, Black Radicals, and other groups that will go unnamed. I’m in the Mideastern section, which is the biggest group and maybe the most important, though to be honest, I don’t know much about Mideastern terrorists. But I was supposed to be learning on the job.
So, to practice my skills, I started up a conversation with the Pakistani guy, whose name was Fasid, and who for all I know is a terrorist, though he looked and talked like an okay guy. I asked him, “What was that place you came from?”
“Islamabad. The capital.”
“Really? How long have you been here?”
“Ten years.”
“You like it here?”
“Sure. Who doesn’t?”
“Well, my ex-brother-in-law, Gary, for one. He’s always bad-mouthing America. Wants to move to New Zealand.”
“I have an uncle in New Zealand.”
“No kidding? Anybody left in Islamabad?”
He laughed, then asked me, “You meeting somebody at the airport?”
“Why do you ask?”
“No luggage.”
“Hey, you’re good.”
“So, you’re meeting somebody? I could hang around and take you back to the city.”
Fasid’s English was pretty good—slang, idioms, and all that. I replied, “I’m meeting somebody, but we have a ride back.”
“You sure? I could hang around.”
Actually, I was meeting an alleged terrorist who’d surrendered himself to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, but I didn’t think that was information I needed to share with the taxi driver. I said, “You a Yankee fan?”
“Not anymore.” Whereupon he launched into a tirade against Steinbrenner, Yankee Stadium, the price of tickets, the salaries of the players, and so forth. These terrorists are clever, sounding just like loyal citizens.
Anyway, I tuned the guy out and thought about how I’d wound up here. As I indicated, I was a homicide detective, one of New York’s finest, if I do say so. A year ago this month, I was playing dodge-the-bullets with two Hispanic gentlemen up on West 102nd Street in what was probably a case of mistaken identity, since there seemed to be no reason for the attempted rub-out. Life is funny sometimes. Anyway, the perps were still at large, though I had my eye out for them, as you might imagine.
After my near-death experience and upon release from the hospital, I accepted my Uncle Harry’s offer to stay at his summer house on Long Island to convalesce. The house is located about a hundred road miles from West 102nd Street, which was fine. Anyway, while I was out there, I got involved with this double murder of a husband and wife, fell in love twice, almost got killed again, and wound up being forcibly retired from the NYPD on a three- quarter disability pension. It’s a long story and kind of a sad one. And the ending is still to come. The perp who did the murders hasn’t been tried yet, and I hope my testimony gets him fried, or whatever the great state of New York decides is the most humane and cheapest way to avoid overcrowding on Death Row. Also, one of the women I fell in love with, Beth Penrose by name, is still sort of in my life. Maybe more on that later.
While all this was going on out on eastern Long Island, my divorce became final. And as if I wasn’t already having a bad R&R out at the beach, I wound up making the professional acquaintance of a schmuck on the double homicide case named Ted Nash of the Central Intelligence Agency who I took a big dislike to, and who hated my guts in return, and who, lo and behold, was now part of my ATTF team. It’s a small world, but not that small, and I don’t believe in coincidence.
There was also another guy involved with that case, George Foster, an FBI agent, who was okay, but not my cup of tea either. Funny how all these Federal types got involved with this local double homicide for what turned out to be the wrong reasons, to wit: The husband and wife who were murdered were U.S. government biologists at Plum Island, not far from where I was supposed to be convalescing. This island is a sort of secret government facility, so when this couple got iced, in come the FBI and the CIA. Ted Nash at first put out this bullshit that he was with the Department of Agriculture, which theoretically runs this Plum Island laboratory that maybe does work with biowarfare stuff. But later, under some pressure from yours truly, he admitted he was CIA, but never mentioned the Anti-Terrorist Task Force, and even if he had, it wouldn’t have meant much to me then. Now it means I’m his partner. Cruel fate. Or something else.
Anyway, it turns out that this double homicide was not a Federal case and Nash and Foster disappeared, only to reappear in my life a few weeks ago when I got assigned to this ATTF Mideastern team. But no sweat, I’ve put in for a transfer to the ATTF’s Irish Republican Army section, which I will probably get. I don’t have any real feelings about the IRA either way, but at least the IRA babes are easy to look at, the guys are more fun than your average Arab terrorist, and the Irish pubs are primo. I could do some real good in the anti-IRA section. Really.
But to backtrack, the two biologists that got murdered out near Plum Island, Tom and Judy Gordon, were actually friends of mine, which is one reason I got involved with that case. The other reason is that I’m stupid.
Anyway, after all this mess out on Long Island, I get offered this great choice of being hauled in front of the NYPD disciplinary board for moonlighting or whatever, or taking a medical disability and going away. So I took the medical, but also negotiated a job at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan where I live. Before I got shot and before the Plum Island mess, I’d taught a class at John Jay as an adjunct professor, so I wasn’t asking for much and I got it.
Starting in January, I was teaching two night classes at JJ and one day class, and I was getting bored out of my mind, so my ex-partner, Dom Fanelli, knows about this Special Contract Agent program with the Feds where they hire former law-enforcement types to work with ATTF. I apply, I’m accepted, probably for all the wrong reasons, and here I am. The pay’s good, the perks are okay, the assignments sound like they could be interesting, and the Federal types are mostly schmucks. I have this problem with Feds, like most cops do, and not even sensitivity training would help.
But as I say, the work seems interesting. The ATTF is a sort of unique and, I may say, elite group (despite the schmucks) that only exists in New York City and environs. It’s made up mostly of NYPD detectives who are great guys, FBI, and some quasi-civilian guys like me hired to round out the team, so to speak. Also, on some teams, when needed, are CIA prima donnas, and also some DEA—Drug Enforcement Agency people who know their business, and know about connections between the drug trade and the terrorist world. There are other Federal types from agencies I can’t mention, and last but not least, we have some Port Authority detectives assigned to
