Storm Front

About ten minutes into the drive, Storm figured out what his move was going to be. He stripped off his jacket, tied it to the steering wheel, then anchored the other end by rolling up the window on it. He wanted to see if he could get the car to continue at least somewhat straight without his hands on the wheel. Yet it still had to allow him to make a left turn.

He fiddled with the jacket until he was satisfied it would work. Then he decided to wait before springing it and untied it. He wanted to lull the van’s occupants into thinking this was just another trip to the office by a guy who worked too much. He needed them to be as unwary as possible. Time was on his side.

They had probably been sitting on the house for days and were likely tired from the stakeout. They’d be sleepier by the end of the ride.

He continued onto the Henry Hudson Parkway — Hudson would have begged his crew to mutiny if he could have seen the road they named after him — and kept a steady speed toward Manhattan. The white panel van stayed comfortably behind him, sometimes as much as a quarter mile back. It was the kind of tail being performed by men who had done this before, knew where they were going, and were not concerned about losing their mark.

Storm passed the George Washington Bridge and stayed with the road as it became the West Side Highway, renamed in 1999 after baseball star Joe DiMaggio — another icon now rolling in his grave. As they went below 42nd Street and started hitting lights, the panel van actually got trapped one light behind, causing Storm some mild consternation. He needed the van tight behind him for his idea to work. He relaxed when it caught up.

Storm made the turn toward the Marlowe Building at Warren Street. There were any number of ways to reach Cracker’s office, but that was the route Cracker said he took. Then Storm made the right on Broadway. He signaled well in advance of Liberty Street, his next turn. He rigged Cracker’s jacket to the steering wheel as he had before.

Storm took one last glance at the panel van. It was still about a block back, cruising through lights that were all timed to stay green. Perfect.

He made the left on Liberty, just beyond a tall building that housed a Sephora and a Bank of America on its lower floors. The moment the van was out of sight, Storm punched the cruise control, which he had set to a pokey twenty-five miles an hour. He sprung from the driver’s seat, leaping out of the passenger side. The car was still accelerating and wasn’t going much more than about twenty. Storm landed on his feet then quickly rolled in between a pair of parked cars.

Eight seconds later, the panel van eased past him, having just made the turn itself. Another car, a red Honda, followed it ten seconds later. Up ahead, Storm heard the scraping of metal as the Maserati careened along some parked cars. So much for straight. Storm peeked out in time to see the Maserati plow into a yellow cab waiting at the light on Nassau Street. The panel van slowed to a halt behind it. The Honda stopped behind the panel van.

The cabbie had sprung out of his car and was waving his arms in the air, shouting in some language that even Storm didn’t understand. The driver of the red Honda — who couldn’t see past the panel van to know what had happened, but could make out that the light was green — honked his horn impatiently.

It was a perfect cover. Storm raced alongside the passenger side of the panel van. He was assuming there were two people in the van, one driving, the other in back with the equipment. His plan was age-old and simple: shoot the driver, make the guy in back take the wheel, and go someplace a little more private, then have a conversation with him.

Storm yanked the passenger door open and had the trigger halfway depressed when he realized the barrel of his gun was pointed at Clara Strike.

CHAPTER 22

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Ling Xi Bang camped out near the Dirksen Senate Office Building, spending the final minutes before her appointment on a park bench, where she could monitor the comings and goings in Senator Donald Whitmer’s suite. Mostly, it was just goings. Around twenty minutes to eight, the last of his staffers went home, leaving the senator alone.

At 7:57, she watched Whitmer take a phone call that, she knew, would be coming from Fake Senator Feinstein’s office. That was Xi Bang’s — or, rather, Jenny Chang’s — cue to move in. She reached into her pouch and pulled out the pill she had been provided. It was a CIA standby: benzotripapine, which counteracted the intoxicating effects of alcohol. It was hell on the kidneys, she had been told, so it wasn’t wise to take it very often. But Storm said Senator Whitmer was a champion drinker, and she needed to be able to keep pace without getting impaired.