“Oh, there’s every chance. You and I, Jack, are going to get it together. A little match-up, a partnership between the executed and the executioner. Mr. DA is about to break every law in his little law book.”
Jack looked down at the file on his kitchen counter. He knew exactly who was on the other end of the line. He had studied him, tried him, convicted him and, on April 15 of last year, watched as Nowaji Cristos, the man on the phone, was executed.
CHAPTER 23
'Hello,” Frank said into his cell phone as he got into the car.
“Frank, Matt Daly.”
“Hey.”
“No bodies yet; we’ve got a torn shirt, probably Jack’s,” Matt said.
Frank had completely forgotten about Matt Daly’s team dragging the river.
“Listen,” Frank said, “you’ve got to do me a favor. Try to keep things from the press as long as you can. And keep it local. Byram Hills cops only. Think you can do that?”
“I’ll do my best. We’re working toward the spillway, probably eight hours before we reach it. Though there’s a good chance their bodies could be hung up in the rocks.”
“Thanks.”
“And Frank, there’s a bullet hole in the shirt, right above the heart. This was no accident.”
“I know.”
“I thought you’d say that. You’re digging into this, aren’t you?”
Frank’s silence answered the question.
“I’ll keep things under wraps as long as I can,” Matt said. “You need any more help, you call me.”
“Thanks again.” Frank hung up the phone, slammed the door, and started the Jeep.
J ACK LEAPED INTO the Audi. He looked at the gas gauge, near empty, and shook his head before he drove out of the driveway as fast as he could, the garage door auto-closing behind him. He headed east down Banksville Road, in the opposite direction that Frank would be coming from. Frank went out the door pissed and would arrive back any minute even more pissed when he found out that Jack had slipped away again. But Jack wasn’t going to risk Mia’s life by involving Frank or anyone else in what he was about to do.
Jack was on his way to meet a dead man. He had wondered what in his life had set him on this path. Was there a singular moment that made this day inevitable? Was it karma, fate, payback for a bad decision in his youth?
His mind jumped back to that night so many years ago when Apollo died, when he killed those two teens. He thought about the promise to himself never to kill again. He thought of how hard he had dedicated himself to fighting crime without a gun, doing whatever it took to get a conviction.
While he was so disturbed by the deaths in that loft building, the lives he took, the life he couldn’t save, swearing off his gun, he realized that he didn’t need the gun to kill. He had done it with the power of the justice system. And while he felt it was justified and within the constraints of the laws of the state, he had still taken the life of a man.
Now that man, Nowaji Cristos, had somehow returned and was exacting his revenge.
CHAPTER 24
On February 8 two years ago, Nowaji Cristos lay prone above UN Plaza, his left eye nuzzled into the gun sight of the Israeli-made Galil sniper rifle. Dressed in a blue maintenance worker’s jumper, his long black hair pulled tightly into a ponytail, he stared down, watching the motorcade’s approach. Cristos knew that the escort by New York City cops on motorcycles was only for show, a gesture to make the Pashir general and ruler feel important, to boost the already oversized ego of a diminutive military man who rose to power through a coup d’etat two years earlier.
The general was of little significance to the world order. His small jungle country had not moved much beyond colonial times, but he had grown to be a nuisance to certain countries’ national interests, with his border skirmishes with Cotis, India, and Bangladesh, military posturing, and the nationalization of private companies- nationalization being his word for personal take-over. And so certain affected parties turned to Cristos, a man with a one-hundred-percent success rate, whose face was not known to the world and whose chosen name meant “the risen ghost.”
Those who hired Cristos never imagined that he knew General Gjwain. He knew him as the ruthless, Napoleonic sadist who had killed his own family so as to inherit the family farm; he knew him as the man with not one iota of courage, military training, or experience who decorated his chest with medals of valor and bravery. Cristos knew Gjwain as the insignificant man who lived across the border not fifty miles from Cristos’s place of birth, a man who was disappearing those who disagreed with him or stood in his way.
Cristos was a man without conscience, but he thought if he ever had one, it would not be burdened by his coming actions. In fact, he considered it a magnanimous gesture to the people who shared his heritage to remove the depraved ruler. He had accepted the job at his usual rate, but it wasn’t about the money. It never was for Cristos. It was about the challenge, testing his skills, pushing his limits. In the end, if it did not raise his game, he would never accept, walking away in search of a new quest.
As the small general exited the black limo, his silver and gold medals glinting in the bright winter sun, Cristos lined up his gun sight, the cross hairs bisecting the diminutive man’s buzz-cut head. He adjusted for the three-mph cross wind and the dry winter air. He wrapped his fingers around the trigger as he had so many times before, fully exhaled, long and slow, purging his body and mind, tuning his focus. He took a half-breath, held it. And finally pulled the trigger.
Cristos rolled over into a crouch behind the parapet wall and out of sight of the world. He quickly broke down the rifle as he moved, and he had it stowed by the time he arrived at the bulkhead door.
He stripped off the blue jumper to reveal a charcoal-gray pinstriped suit, custom-tailored over a powerful body. He looked every part the nouveau-riche Wall Street banker, with his blue iridescent tie, polished cap-toe shoes, and perfect ponytail, as he walked down the stairs to the thirty-third floor and entered apartment 33A.
The apartment belonged to Naveed and Jasmine Bonsley, a society couple who had emigrated from India forty years earlier and had amassed a fortune from thirteen pharmaceutical patents they held. Their four-million- dollar apartment had nine rooms with a view of the East River and a southerly view of Lower Manhattan.
The Bonsleys were in bed in the other room and had been all morning. They had been out the night before, arriving home after midnight to find Cristos sitting in a club chair and staring out the window.
Confused and impaired by too much champagne, Naveed questioned the man as his wife reached for the phone, but her fingers never made their way to the dial. With primal speed, Cristos burst out of the chair, his hand snapping out, grabbing her thin neck and lifting her six inches off the floor. Naveed stood there in panic as Jasmine’s frail legs uselessly kicked the air, her hands wrapping around her assailant’s as she struggled to breathe.
Cristos carried the fifty-five-year-old woman through the living room, past the dining room, to the master bedroom, flinging her about like a rag doll. He finally gripped her shoulder with his other hand and in a single move snapped her neck. He flung her to the bed, where her limbs splayed out as her dead eyes stared off.
Naveed ran to her side, clutching her, screaming her name as tears flooded his face. He turned to see Cristos above him and didn’t flinch, didn’t move-he just wanted it to end, to be reunited with his dead wife.
With the morning sun pouring in, Cristos looked out the living-room window to the south toward the entrance to the UN, where police had swarmed the area and cordoned off First Avenue. He knew the drill: they would fan out
