Read Online The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel by Dick Wolf - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dick Wolf
Tags: United States, Literature & Fiction, Contemporary, Thrillers, Mystery, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, American, Contemporary Fiction, Thrillers & Suspense
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up?” he asked, going for nonchalance.
“Check this out.” Hawk beckoned him with an exaggerated motion.
“Hawk, I’m in middle of something.”
“No, no, no.” Hawk reached for him. Startled, Lin tried to dodge the thick hand, then felt himself lose balance. As he attempted to regain it and go for his knife, Hawk thrust the bright green tablet monitor toward his face. On a baseball diamond, shown from a camera in center field, the batter swung and missed, the catcher squeezed the ball into his mitt, and leaped up.
Along with one of the broadcast announcers, Hawk shouted, “Harvey just pitched a perfect game!”
E arly the next morning, Lin purchased a can of Coca-Cola from a vending machine and found a seat at a back corner table of the food court at a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop he’d selected for its crowds, free Wi-Fi, and lack of surveillance cameras.
Powering on a virgin, seven-inch Nextbook computer tablet that had run him sixty-nine dollars in cash, he inserted a flash drive loaded with the injection tool. His video capture had been digitized overnight at headquarters and then transmitted back to him along with a depressing electronicom from his boss: the Interdisciplinary Science Building penetration had been ill-conceived, the NorthAmerican Division chief complained, also requesting eyeglasses matching Lin’s, custom-fitted with a video camera (they’d cost the equivalent of $10,000 U.S.). Far worse, HQ’s search of the Times system had yielded little intel that they couldn’t have accessed with the basic ninety-nine-cent introductory special subscription. If Chay Maryland or another reporter indeed had the Verlyn cache, they hadn’t been foolish enough to upload it to the Times .
Lin would reply that the reporters’ discretion was understandable. But as anyone who’d operated in the United States knew (the North American Division chief had never once set foot in the field), such discretion was an anomaly. First he needed to go online and see for himself. With Willoughby’s Structured Query Language, he was able to waltz into the New York Times system and then go to the backstage area, where reporters read internal memos, posted stories, and stored large files.
To her additional credit, Chay Maryland, the reporter on the Verlyn story, filed stories she composed on a secure personal computer. Secure, that is, until Lin accessed it.
If he could get Maryland’s home address, he could break in and copy the entire contents of her hard drive, or he could simply steal her computer. Her address was listed nowhere, however, not on voting or tax records, not in the aggregators and databases private investigators pay fifty dollars a month for. She was a cipher, either naturally or as a function of her experience.
Thankfully, the New York Times Human Resources Department’s complete staff directory was wide open to him now. It listed each employee’s date of birth, salary, Social Security number, and, yes, home address.
CHAPTER 9
F BI special agent Evans could have said, in about ten seconds, “Walter Doyle was found shot to death in Battery Park yesterday in a manner similar to Harun Ahmed.”
Including extraneous information like the courses the victim had taught at Stuyvesant High School prior to his retirement, Evans took twenty minutes to impart the same information while briefing a small group that included Fisk. They sat in the smaller of the two conference rooms at the FBI office on Ninth Avenue, above Chelsea Market. Fisk might have arrived via the footbridge connecting the FBI to the NYPD Intel offices, which were directly across Ninth Avenue, but the footbridge was always locked on both ends. Symbolic of the relationship between the two services, he thought.
At the head of the table, Evans went on, reading directly from the medical examiner’s report: “Entrance wound one inch to the right of the left scapula. The projectile perforated the heart through the right atrium, .5
“Check this out.” Hawk beckoned him with an exaggerated motion.
“Hawk, I’m in middle of something.”
“No, no, no.” Hawk reached for him. Startled, Lin tried to dodge the thick hand, then felt himself lose balance. As he attempted to regain it and go for his knife, Hawk thrust the bright green tablet monitor toward his face. On a baseball diamond, shown from a camera in center field, the batter swung and missed, the catcher squeezed the ball into his mitt, and leaped up.
Along with one of the broadcast announcers, Hawk shouted, “Harvey just pitched a perfect game!”
E arly the next morning, Lin purchased a can of Coca-Cola from a vending machine and found a seat at a back corner table of the food court at a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop he’d selected for its crowds, free Wi-Fi, and lack of surveillance cameras.
Powering on a virgin, seven-inch Nextbook computer tablet that had run him sixty-nine dollars in cash, he inserted a flash drive loaded with the injection tool. His video capture had been digitized overnight at headquarters and then transmitted back to him along with a depressing electronicom from his boss: the Interdisciplinary Science Building penetration had been ill-conceived, the NorthAmerican Division chief complained, also requesting eyeglasses matching Lin’s, custom-fitted with a video camera (they’d cost the equivalent of $10,000 U.S.). Far worse, HQ’s search of the Times system had yielded little intel that they couldn’t have accessed with the basic ninety-nine-cent introductory special subscription. If Chay Maryland or another reporter indeed had the Verlyn cache, they hadn’t been foolish enough to upload it to the Times .
Lin would reply that the reporters’ discretion was understandable. But as anyone who’d operated in the United States knew (the North American Division chief had never once set foot in the field), such discretion was an anomaly. First he needed to go online and see for himself. With Willoughby’s Structured Query Language, he was able to waltz into the New York Times system and then go to the backstage area, where reporters read internal memos, posted stories, and stored large files.
To her additional credit, Chay Maryland, the reporter on the Verlyn story, filed stories she composed on a secure personal computer. Secure, that is, until Lin accessed it.
If he could get Maryland’s home address, he could break in and copy the entire contents of her hard drive, or he could simply steal her computer. Her address was listed nowhere, however, not on voting or tax records, not in the aggregators and databases private investigators pay fifty dollars a month for. She was a cipher, either naturally or as a function of her experience.
Thankfully, the New York Times Human Resources Department’s complete staff directory was wide open to him now. It listed each employee’s date of birth, salary, Social Security number, and, yes, home address.
CHAPTER 9
F BI special agent Evans could have said, in about ten seconds, “Walter Doyle was found shot to death in Battery Park yesterday in a manner similar to Harun Ahmed.”
Including extraneous information like the courses the victim had taught at Stuyvesant High School prior to his retirement, Evans took twenty minutes to impart the same information while briefing a small group that included Fisk. They sat in the smaller of the two conference rooms at the FBI office on Ninth Avenue, above Chelsea Market. Fisk might have arrived via the footbridge connecting the FBI to the NYPD Intel offices, which were directly across Ninth Avenue, but the footbridge was always locked on both ends. Symbolic of the relationship between the two services, he thought.
At the head of the table, Evans went on, reading directly from the medical examiner’s report: “Entrance wound one inch to the right of the left scapula. The projectile perforated the heart through the right atrium, .5
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