Chapter 6
Clare smacked her forehead. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before now.”
“Hey. Hey.” Russ rubbed her arm. “Patten said he sent patrol cars to do drive-bys of the city’s synagogues.”
She shook her head. “It’s not a biblical holiday, it doesn’t require anyone to go to synagogue. It’s a celebration at home. Like…” She searched for an analogy. “Like a party for someone’s birthday.”
“Okay. I don’t think the militia is going door-to-door with IEDs.”
“Yeah, but people can gather outside their homes. Do something special together.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket.
“Are you—what, searching that list of activities?”
She found the number she was looking for and pressed the button. She held up her hand before Russ could ask another question.
“Hi, Jessica here.”
Thank God. “Hi, Rabbi Oppenheim, this is Clare Fergusson. We met at the ecumenical seminar last year. I don’t know if you—”
“Of course I remember you! The very pregnant priest. You’ve had the baby, of course.”
“The proverbial bouncing boy. Look, I have what may sound like an odd question. Are there any public Hannukah parties tonight? Some sort of big gathering?”
The rabbi laughed. “You called the right woman. The answer is yes, and I’m actually almost there.”
“There is…?”
“At the Empire State Plaza.”
Clare stared at Russ. “Rabbi, can I put you on speaker?”
“Sure! And please—” Clare had already switched the call. “Call me Jess.”
“Okay. Jess, what’s going on at the Empire State Plaza?”
Russ raised his eyebrows.
“So the New York State Museum and the archives are doing an exhibit on the Jewish community in Albany from the Dutch days until now. It’s their biggest exhibit of the year, and a bunch of congregations thought it would be a great place to do a Hannukah celebration with, you know, an educational component for non-Jews as well. ”
“So it’s in the museum?”
“No, we’re having lots of food on offer, so they’ve rolled all the cases down to the south concourse, near the Cultural Education Center entrance.”
Clare looked at Russ for context.
“The concourse is belowground. Open to the public. It runs all the way from the museum to the capital building.”
“Who’s that?” Jess asked.
Russ took her phone. “Rabbi, I’m Clare’s husband, Russ Van Alstyne. I need you to listen to me very carefully.”
“Oh!” Her voice changed. “You’re a cop, right? Am I remembering correctly?”
He hesitated. “Yes. I am. And I have reason to believe a white nationalist militia group might be targeting your Hannukah celebration.” He laid out the situation in short strokes, concluding with, “I’d be a lot happier if you called off the whole thing and got your people out of there.”
“Yeah, no.” Jess sounded much less worried than Clare would have liked. “I’ll pass the word along when I get there and make sure everyone is paying attention. And there’s a state police office a five-minute walk down the concourse from where we’ll be.”
Clare took her phone back. “Jess, Russ has dealt with these men personally. They’re serious, and they’re scary.”
“Clare.” The rabbi sighed. “We’re Jews. If we stopped what we’re doing every time someone spewed hate at us, we’d never step out of doors.”
Clare groaned. “I really dislike that I can’t argue with that. Please be careful.”
“I promise I will. Let’s catch up after the holidays, okay?”
Clare pocketed her phone. “Now what? Was I off-base?”
Russ glanced at the setting sun. “No. I don’t think you were.”
“What the hell do you mean, you’re leaving? I need you here!” Patten swung toward Kevin, who had spun his chair around as soon as Russ had announced his intentions. “I need both of you! You’re the only ones who can ID these creeps!”
Russ raised his hands. “Listen. Vince. It makes sense. I heard the captain run his mouth about the Jews this and the Jews that more than once.”
Kevin nodded. “He thinks there’s a Jewish plot to bring in immigrants. To replace white people.”
Patten pointed at both men. “We turned out half the force and the staties for your tip. You guys brought us here.”
“No, the sighting of an Amber Alert suspect brought you here.” Clare could tell Russ was trying to bring the temperature down.
“And you said he was part of this militia bombing thing!”
The Albany officers in front of the monitors were leaning forward, extremely intent on not drawing their commander’s attention. Through the open door, the cops and security guards out of Patten’s direct line of fire were listening avidly.
“When that was our only lead, it made sense—”
“The mall’s got hundreds of people inside and about as many places to stash explosives! If they blow this place up, it’ll be bigger than…” Patten paused, red-faced, struggling for a comparison.
“Nine-Eleven?” one cop suggested.
“Shut your mouth, we don’t dishonor Nine-Eleven like that!”
“Listen to me!”
Even Patten paused at the sound of Russ’s voice. “What? I’m listening.”
“Check March’s phone. He was walking around, making calls. Who was he calling? Where are they?”
“We can’t run a call record from here. We gotta get the carrier involved.”
“You can start with seeing the numbers, though, yeah? Let’s try phoning one or two of them ourselves.”
Patten jerked his head in a nod, gesturing to the cop with the headset. “Tell ’em.” He turned toward Kevin. “And you. Keep looking at that tape until I tell you to stop!”
“The chief’s right.” Kevin stood up. “A big Hannukah celebration is a much more likely target. If they set off bombs here at the mall, they’re going to kill a lot of white people. Families. Presumably Christians.”
Patten snorted. “That didn’t stop the Oklahoma City bombers, and they were white pride nuts, too.”
“That was a federal building. They were attacking the government.”
Hadley stepped forward. “The Empire State Plaza is all government buildings. Even if their bombs aren’t strong enough to bring anything down, they’ll still be disrupting business in a major way.”
“Absolutely true,” Yíxīn added. “I work there. If the militia can cripple the elevators and escalators, just accessing parking is going to be a nightmare.”
“That’s their big play?” Patten rolled his eyes. “Make it a pain in the ass for lawyers to get to their cars?”
“No.” Russ cut his hand across the air, as if slicing through the arguments. “It’s just a side benefit. An add-on. The real win is killing as many Jews as possible and striking terror into every Jewish gathering in New York for the foreseeable future.”
There was a moment of silence. Then the communications officer spoke up. “Commander?”
Patten gestured for the man to speak.
“We’ve got the results back from the guys holding March.”
“Do you have a list of numbers?”
“No, sir.” The officer frowned. “He wasn’t making any calls.”
“What?” Patten strode across the floor, holding his hand.
“Gimme the headset.” The officer snatched it off and handed it to his boss, who held it up to one ear.
“Whaddaya mean he wasn’t making calls? We saw him live on screen talking his head off.
” He listened. He glanced toward Russ. “Uh-huh. Okay.” He handed the headset back.
His voice was heavy. “Last call he made was yesterday.”
No one spoke.
“It was a feint,” Clare finally said. “A distraction.” A standard of military deception for thousands of years.
Russ nodded. “Their captain was career army.”
“You don’t need to be a soldier to play that trick.” Paul tapped the NYDEC patch on his shoulder. “Every hunter knows how to use a lure.”
Patten scrubbed his face with both hands, mumbling something that was either a prayer or a curse.
“Okay. Okay.” He shook his head. “We can’t leave the mall without clearing it.
You go. I’ll try to get some staties over there.
If you see anything, don’t waste time contacting me, go straight to nine-one-one.
” He looked at their motley crew and shook his head.
“Good luck. And Van Alstyne? I hope to hell you’re wrong. ”