He had started the process three weeks ago. Now he would finalize everything.

He worked for two hours, nailing down loose ends, and then placed a series of calls to numbers connected to U.S. Army Intelligence. Within forty minutes, Markov received a callback through the hotel phone lines from his contact, a Colonel Mark Redmond, who told Markov to log on to a secure Web site where they could conduct a live video chat.

Markov used the first part of the chat to report the progress of the arms shipment, outlining how it would be flown first into Beirut and from there to Al Thaurah Airport in Syria.

Redmond told him that from Al Thaurah U.S. Army contractors would truck the weapons to their final destination. Markov had no concerns about what happened to the weapons after he completed his part of the delivery, but he knew Redmond gave him that information so it would be clear that the shipment would have to be packed in a way to hold up under transit by truck.

The video chat was mostly one way, with Redmond responding in short sentences.

Once their business was concluded, Markov asked Redmond for a favor, explaining that he was having trouble with a criminal group in New York that was using extortion to impede his operations.

For the first time during the live video chat, Redmond looked directly into the computer webcam.

Redmond was central casting for an Army operative. All-American Big Ten football boy, aging into a hardened man, close-cropped hair going gray at the temples.

“What kind of favor?”

“I may need your help finding some people.”

Redmond paused. Calculating his answer. There was always the possibility of blowback if he agreed. But he was under enormous pressure to deliver the arms shipment. Anything that took Markov off track couldn’t be tolerated. Markov had been known to disappear for weeks or months at the first hint of trouble.

“Why?”

“They are causing me trouble.”

“Is it jeopardizing our contract?”

Markov thought carefully before he answered. If Redmond had any doubts about his ability to deliver on his commitment it could be very costly to him.

“Not yet. And rest assured, this is a problem caused by someone else. Not me. But if I need your help, I want you to know in advance. And I won’t ask unless it’s necessary.”

Redmond pursed his lips, nodded, and limited his response to, “Duly noted.”

“Thank you.”

Markov ended the connection. He would have to use Redmond very carefully. He had Milstein, for whatever that idiot was worth. He had Gregor and his men. And he had another resource he could use, Ivan Kolenka, but only if it became absolutely necessary. Right now, he would put pressure on Milstein and Gregor.

24

Beck had been hunkered down next to Alex Liebowitz feeding him information, providing descriptions, looking at pictures Alex brought up for identification, in between making phone calls to the Bolo brothers, getting up to check with Ciro, and looking outside to see how Willie Reese was doing with the window repair.

Liebowitz listened, typed in data, manipulated the mouse, shifted his gaze back and forth between two monitors. Ran through databases. Pulled up information.

After about an hour, Alex leaned back and announced, “Okay, so here we go. We’ve got the arms dealer. And we’ve got the fighter.”

“How’d you find out?”

“Started with Elizabeth Stern’s ID and password to get into the NCIC database. And then from there to other sources, some of which I have my own ways into. I mean, sometimes it’s like the NYPD antiterrorist group is doing it, sometimes not. Some of it was just public sites. It’s really just a matter of…”

Beck gently interrupted Alex before he began with a long lecture. “Great. Great. I’m glad the thing with Elizabeth is still good.”

“You like her, don’t you?”

“Very much.”

“I have to remember to set up a wormhole in case she moves on. But that might be very tough. They use automatically regenerated six-digit randomized numbers every sixty seconds, so I’d have to get hold of at least one functioning sequence that I could…”

“Alex.”

“Yeah?”

“What have you got?”

“Right, right. So…”

Liebowitz sat back and linked his hands behind his head, propped a foot on the handle of Beck’s bottom desk drawer, folding into himself. His face went blank. The only movement was from his slowly blinking eyes.

Beck had seen this before. Sitting while Alex zoned out was like waiting for a massive file to download. The only difference was that no computer could match the processing being done by Alex Liebowitz’s brain: sorting, comparing, pulling together a lifetime of information and coming to conclusions in seconds that might take others days or weeks, if they were lucky.

Alex took his foot off the desk drawer, tipped forward and began pulling up information on his monitors.

“Okay, the fat guy as you call him is Leonid Markov. Also known as Leonard Markov. Also known as Leonyti Sergeyevich Markov. Also known as Sergey Markovich. He’s Russian. But where he was born is a little vague. Best guess he came out of Perm. There’s a lot of old mob based there. Before Perestroika.”

“Vory-v-Zakone?”

“I’d imagine he has connections, but he’s not one of them. He comes on the scene as an arms dealer pretty far back. Looks like Leonyti goes where the fighting is. Africa, mostly Liberia. Then he pops up in Yugoslavia during the Bosnian-Serb mess in the late nineties. There are records of him being in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Albania, Syria, lately Israel and Brighton Beach, New York. And a lot of time in Moscow.”

“Any arrests or anything?”

“The Belgians put out a red alert for him with Interpol in 2008, but apparently nothing came of it.”

“Why?”

“Who knows? If he’s based here now, my guess is he’s working with U.S. intelligence. Maybe the Israelis, too. If he’s running weapons where they want weapons to go, he’s most likely got a lot of protection. These guys are part of a system, and ultimately the big boys run the system. Who do you think makes most of the weapons in the world?”

“We do,” said Beck.

“And the Russians, China, Israel, Great Britain, France. But you’re right. Nobody comes close to us.”

“Where’d you find this stuff?”

“A lot of it in DEA files. They have more foreign bureaus than the CIA. Plus in a bunch of other unknown fucked-up subagencies inside Homeland Security. Anybody supplying arms to anybody gets on their radar.”

“What about the other guy?”

More screens and mouse clicks.

“He’s a Bosnian Serb. Gregor Stepanovich. Ex-military, but not from any standard army. Nasty fucker. Twenty counts of crimes against humanity, violations of laws or customs of war, and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, including leadership responsibility for crimes against Muslims in three locations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, specifically expelling Muslims to various camps, killing, raping, and torture.”

Alex turned away from the computer monitors and looked at Beck.

“Guys like that who come out of places like that, the shit they’ve done, you realize how bent they are.”

Beck didn’t answer.

Alex turned back to his keyboard and brought up a photo. “As for the others, you picked this one out. The one with the knife?”

“Yeah.”

“Krylo Bartosh. Charged with participating in the beating and mass killing of two hundred sixty-one non-Serb men removed by force from Vukovar Hospital. I don’t know what his connection to Stepanovich is exactly. Their paths must have crossed somewhere. Your description of the other guy was pretty vague, but I can pull up a bunch of mug shots the United Nations commission pulled together.”

“No. I didn’t get a good enough look at him to ID him.”

Alex leaned back. “Okay.”

Beck thought for a moment.