Chapter Twenty Nine:
Hal Lockwood closes his cellphone and growls. He had just informed his employer that his target had been taken into protective custody by the US Marshals Service hours earlier. To make matters worse, the target's family had been whisked away also, effectively taking away any leverage that he may have been able to use. To say that his employer was upset regarding the news would be an understatement.
Hal had been hired to tie up 'loose ends', two retired and one active NYPD detectives. He had no idea why they were targeted and really didn't care. He had built a reputation as an elite assassin and only cared about the job. His speciality was the long distance kill, his skills honed as a Special Forces sniper in Iraq. He was very good at his job.
John Raglan required use of his skills with his rifle, while Gary McCallister required an 'up close and personal' interaction. Roy Montgomery was supposed to be a victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Or at least that was his plan before the NYPD Captan was taken into custody in the middle of the night.
His employer said that he would use his contacts to find out just where they were keeping Montgomery and advised him that he may have to recruit 'help' if a decision was made that a breach of his safe house was justified. Lockwood preferred to work alone, but understood the severity of the situation. Besides, his employer scared the shit out of him.
Known only by the code name 'LocSat', Hal had been recruited a few weeks after his dishonorable discharge from the military. Lockwood had spent the last several years traveling the world for his employer. Judging by the places he seemed to frequent for his assignments, he could only assume that LocSat was deeply involved in the trade of heroin. Whatever LocSat was really involved in mattered little to him.
—
William Bracken ends his call, cursing himself for trusting Roy Montgomery. For over a decade his arrangement with the three detectives had proven to be a good choice. He had profited from their misdeeds and now he was in a position of real power. In spite of his relatively short tenure in Washington, Bracken had been able to secure positions on several key committees. Hell, there was talk about a run for the White House if his career trajectory remained in tact.
The call from his contact in the US Marshals Service did not bear the fruit he had hoped for. All he could confirm was that Roy Montgomery and his family were taken into protective custody. His contact could not confirm where they were being kept, but guessed it was someplace close to the city.
The arrest of Montgomery created another potential threat to his arrangement with his benefactor - Kate Beckett. The daughter of the meddling attorney had posed no threat to him until one of the men involved in the coverup decides to clear his conscience. That had started a chain of events that lead to their present situation.
Montgomery was responsible for making sure that Beckett never looked into her mother's murder. He had a vested interest in making sure that the young detective stayed away from the case as his own sordid role in her murder would be revealed. Bracken had decided to employ Simmons to 'take care of' the detective without the knowledge of his benefactor.
Bracken dreaded making the call to his real employer. After all, this whole mess was due to his past. But the money he obtained from his relationship with the three corrupt cops was what funded his initial foray into politics and onto the radar of the man that had moved him on to the next level.
That and the cut he took from Vulcan Simmons in exchange for making sure that he stayed out of jail while the thug built a drug empire in the city.
His benefactor had approached him when he was making his first run at the senate and promised him a win in exchange for his cooperation. A well funded PAC was created for him that assured his victory in exchange for Bracken's 'assistance' when needed. Using his roles on the various committees that his benefactor had arranged for him to be on, he helped sway policies that would support his boss' agenda - whatever that was.
—
CIA Deputy Director Vikram Singh frowns as he ends the call with Bracken. The Senator had been a valuable asset, but his past transgressions threatened to expose his entire operation - something he could not allow.
He knew that Bracken was dirty, in fact that's why he approached him. Singh was responsible for creating a supply network for heroin that would fund black ops for the agency. Most of these black ops were in support of illegal activities like this. Activities that had made him very wealthy - and powerful.
Compartmentalization was vital to the entire operation and only Bracken knew that he was LocSat. No one in his own agency knew about his role in all of this and assumed that he was nothing more than another government 'suit'. His Pakistani ancestry provided him with the family ties that allowed his frequent visits to the country. Visits that had proven vital when he established the pipeline from Afghanistan years ago.
If they couldn't silence Montgomery, he would be forced to 're-evaluate' his arrangement with the Senator. Corruptible politicians were a dime a dozen in this city. William Bracken was just another interchangeable part in this machine, nothing more.
He'd give his people twenty four hours to rectify the threat and then he would make the changes necessary to assure the continued success of the operation that he had built.
—
Vulcan Simmons was afraid. His former business partner, William Bracken had asked him to help tie up the loose end that was Katherine Beckett. He was sure that his two best enforcers were more than enough for the task. His hubris may have put his entire operation at risk. His contact at the NYPD informed him the Jako Marley had survived, but was in police custody at a nearby hospital. While he trusted his lieutenant to never divulge who had sent him, he couldn't afford to draw any undue attention to either himself or his operation.
Like most successful criminals, he operated a legitimate business to act as a front for his illegal ones. In Simmons case, it was an Import/Export business. This business also served as the method for transporting the heroin that fueled his main money making enterprise. Thanks to the arrangement he had with his new partner, known only by the code name LocSat, he had been able to expand his empire well beyond New York City. In fact, Simmons was responsible for nearly all of the drugs that was found on the East coast.
Any undue attention directed towards he or his business would surely make its way back to LocSat and Vulcan was keenly aware of how his benefactor dealt with problems. LocSat had the resources to make him disappear without a trace and now he had to tell him that his favor for Bracken had brought the attention of the NYPD to his door.
He needed to silence Marley before he could talk.
—
Jordan Shaw sat across from Roy Montgomery and waited for him to begin talking. She had provided the proof he demanded that his wife and children were far away from the city and safe in the custody of the US Marshals. She had advised him that their arrangement was conditional upon his testimony in court against William Bracken and that he would only receive WitSec protection if the evidence lead to a conviction.
Montgomery had provided Shaw's agents with the combination to the hidden safe in his office at the 12th precinct that contained a packet of evidence. They were able to retrieve it during the night as surreptitiously as possible, but Shaw was sure that someone had probably already informed the Senator.
She was right.
With the entire session being recorded, Shaw opened the packet as Montgomery explained what each document represented. There were cancelled checks from bank accounts that could be traced back to the former assistant DA and other financial records. Shaw was smart enough to know that the records themselves only proved that Bracken had paid Montgomery for something. A good attorney would simply argue that it was something perfectly legitimate.
There were several micro cassette tapes in the envelope that were far more valuable to her case. One by one, they played the tapes as Roy explained that he had started to tape every call from Bracken for his own protection. One of the tapes was a duplicate of the one Kate had discovered in her mother's broken elephant sculpture. It was then that Roy revealed that he had sent her a copy of the tape as a last ditch effort to get her to back away from the Pulgotti case. Sent anonymously to her office, he'd hoped that hearing it would stop her. She must have hidden it for safekeeping instead.
When pressed as to why he would do something like that, Montgomery replied that all of the other people that he and the others had came across with their kidnapping scheme were criminals and deserved punishment, even Pulgotti. Johanna Beckett was an innocent and did not deserve to die.
From behind the two way mirror in the observation area adjacent to the interrogation room, Kate fights back tears as she hears her former mentor confess that he had tried to save her mother, but failed. This explained so many things. How she had obtained the tape, why it was a conversation between Montgomery and Bracken only and why he took her under his wing like he did. It also explained why he made sure that she stayed away from her mother's case.
Rick was standing beside her the entire time and could only wrap his arm around her in a comforting hug as she listened to what was being said in the other room. He wished that he could do something for her to help take away the pain. Rodgers couldn't imagine how he would react if the situation was reversed and was convinced that she was even more extraordinary than he believed before. That and the fact he loved her more than anything or anyone.
Other tapes were more damning for the Senator. Calls to Montgomery on behalf of Vulcan Simmons or one of his associates asking for evidence to be 'lost' or paperwork to be mishandled that would assure the guilty would walk away. Shaw pressed Montgomery for more details on Bracken's relationship with Simmons and all he could offer was a guess that they had some sort of an arrangement unbeknownst to him.
It made sense to Shaw. The money that Bracken made from his arrangement with the three corrupt cops was nowhere near what he needed to run a successful campaign - even for the New York State Senate. No, the that type of money could have been provided by Simmons. She would contact the DEA and find out just how much they had on Vulcan after she contacted her boss, the Director of operations for the New York office.
