Infamy Read online

  Hamm rolled her eyes and looked at the judge. “Your Honor, do I have to endure this nonsense?”

  “Try your best,” Dermondy said.

  “You’re making it all up, Karp,” Hamm shot back. “You don’t have anything to back up these wild fabrications.”

  “No?” Karp smiled and walked over to the prosecution table and picked up two photographs, one of which he handed to Hamm.

  “Do you recognize this man?”

  Hamm looked at the photograph and shrugged. “It looks like one of the actors from the show last night. It was an all-black cast and they were dressed up in eighteenth-century costumes.”

  “Well, look around the courtroom and see if you can spot the man in the photograph,” Karp said.

  Confused, Hamm did as told until her eyes came to rest on Detective Fulton. Her jaw dropped.

  “You seem to be looking at Detective Clay Fulton. Is he the man in the photograph?”

  Hamm nodded dumbly. “Yes.”

  “You’ll notice that he’s carrying an eighteenth-century-style walking stick. But this stick has a directional microphone.”

  “So what?” Hamm said.

  Karp handed her the second photograph. “This is the same photograph only not cropped so tightly. It now includes two women who appear to be speaking to each other. Do you recognize them?”

  “Is this how you do it, Karp?” Hamm said angrily. “You set people up and frame them? Obviously one of the women is me, and the other is that woman.” She pointed at Malovo. “But I didn’t recognize her from Istanbul when she came up to me backstage. She was just one of many people I met.”

  Nodding to Malovo, who stepped back out of the courtroom while Fulton closed the door behind her, Karp then turned to Dermondy. “Your Honor, the People would now like to play an audiotape recorded last night backstage at the Richard Rodgers Theatre.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Karp gave a signal to Katz, who had taken up a position near a tape machine. The assistant district attorney pressed a button, and immediately a heavily accented Russian female’s voice filled the courtroom.

  “You have not changed since Istanbul,” said the first voice.

  “I’m not here to talk about Istanbul,” said the second.

  Karp nodded to Katz to stop the tape. “Do you recognize that second voice?” he asked Hamm.

  When Hamm didn’t reply, Karp shrugged and nodded to Katz, who again pressed the button.

  “No, you are here about the MIRAGE files and how you were willing to go along with the murder of the colonel to prevent knowledge of your little deal with Well-Con from getting out. The black-market oil. The deal with the Russians, the Syrians, the Iranians, and ISIS.”

  “What do you want, Ajmaani?”

  “As I told you on the telephone, I want ten million dollars in a Swiss bank account for which I can provide a number. You will also get me out of custody in New York and transport me to the place of my choosing. And just so I don’t have an ‘accident,’ I have an accomplice, a Brooklyn gangster named Ivgeny Karchov­ski—look him up—who will release the deciphered ­MIRAGE files to the press and FBI if something happens to me.”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “It’s worth it, no?”

  “We’ll want you to testify that Karp put you up to all of this. And that Mueller and Fitzsimmons were part of the conspiracy when your efforts to blackmail Mr. Constantine fell through.”

  “Whatever you want. But I will need a telephone call from Mr. Karchovski telling me that the money is in the account number on this card, or I will tell the truth about MIRAGE. Do we have a deal?”

  “You do what I said, and you’ll get your money and we’ll get you out of the country. But fuck with me, and we’ll feed you to the pigs on a little farm the Agency has in New Jersey.”

  Karp turned to Hamm, whose face was the color of a tomato. “Do you recognize your voice there, Ms. Hamm? Were you attempting to obstruct justice? Threatening murder? Possibly treason? You’ve certainly lied under oath.”

  Slowly, Hamm’s lips drew back from her teeth and her eyes stared daggers at Karp. “I’m not answering any more of your questions, you bastard,” she snarled. “Executive privilege!”

  “Your Honor?” Karp asked, looking at Dermondy.

  The judge leaned forward and pointed his finger at Hamm. “While you’re in my courtroom, you are ordered to answer relevant questions or be held in contempt.”

  “I work for the president,” Hamm replied, “and answer to no one but him.”

  “Then I will direct the prosecution to proceed with a grand jury indictment against you for perjury and contempt,” Dermondy said, his voice icy. “Mr. McIntyre, I’m directing you as the court clerk to place Ms. Hamm in custody.”

  As the gallery gasped collectively and Hamm was led from the courtroom, Dermondy turned to Karp. “I’m almost afraid to ask, but call your next witness.”

  Karp smiled. “With pleasure, Your Honor. The People call Nadya Malovo.”

  22

  ONE LAST TIME, FULTON OPENED the side door, and Nadya Malovo sauntered through. Dressed in a gray federal prisoner jumpsuit that failed to hide her lithe, curvaceous body, she still walked like she was the one in control of the situation. Even Court Clerk Duffy McIntyre, who thought he’d seen almost everything in his long service to the court, turned beet red as she approached to be sworn in, and then stumbled over his words as she transfixed him with her eyes.

  Malovo gave McIntyre a smile, then stepped onto the stand and took her seat like an Oscar-winning actress aware that all eyes were upon her. She gazed at Karp, who had positioned himself in front of the witness.

  “Good afternoon,” Karp said. “Please state your full name and spell your last name.”

  “Good afternoon. I am Nadya Malovo,” she purred, “M-A-L-O-V-O.”

  “Do you also sometimes go by the name Ajmaani?”

  “I am known in some parts of the world as Ajmaani, yes.”

  “And why the alias?”

  “I guess you could call it my nom de guerre,” Malovo replied with a shrug. “I sometimes find it necessary to pass myself off as a Chechen jihadi.”

  “An Islamic terrorist?”

  “That’s accurate.”

  “Ms. Malovo, let me back up a bit and have you give the jurors a little history about yourself.”

  Malovo laughed. “A little history,” she said with a smile at the jurors. “I have a long and varied history, but I will try to keep this short. I was born in Moscow and raised in an orphanage. I’ll skip the horrors of that place and how I was able to escape and rise above it, but eventually I was trained by what was then known as the KGB, the Soviet intelligence agency,” she said. “As a KGB agent, I traveled to many places in the world on the orders of my superiors, who in turn reported to whoever was in power in the Kremlin. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, I decided to follow my comrades in the brave new world of capitalism and resigned from the intelligence service and began freelancing for whoever paid for my services, which sometimes included the Russian government, or those who collaborate with the regime.”

  “You worked for the KGB, but you were not just a spy, were you?” Karp asked.

  Malovo shook her head. “Actually, I was trained to be an assassin.”

  “An assassin. As such, have you killed people?”

  “Many.”

  “Sometimes because you were ordered to by your government, and after that for money?”

  “Both. Yes. And sometimes just to survive.”

  Karp held up a folder, which he handed to her. “Ms. Malovo, I’m handing you legal documents marked for identification as People’s Exhibits 54 to 58. Would you please look these over and describe them to the jury?”

  Malovo leafed through the papers. She then nodded and closed the
folder, handing it back to Karp. “These are indictment papers charging me with six counts of murder in the County of New York.”

  “You’ve been charged by my office, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you been offered any deal by my office in regard to those charges in exchange for your truthful testimony today?”

  “No.”

  “Are you aware of what will occur after you testify here today?”

  “Yes. I will be handed over to U.S. law enforcement, who also have indicted me for I believe a dozen murders.”

  “Will you be tried in federal court and then returned to New York to stand trial for murder here?”

  “Perhaps someday,” Malovo said, “but first I am to be handed over to Russian authorities at Fort Dix in New Jersey. I will then be transported back to Russia, where I am accused of murder and treason. I am so popular, I doubt I will be able to return to New York anytime soon, if ever.”

  “And yet your testimony today is voluntary?”

  “Indeed, my testimony here today would not have happened if I had not arranged for it to happen.”

  “Why did you agree to testify today without a deal, such as a lesser charge, from my office, perhaps, or the federal government, or the Russian government?”

  Malovo looked over at the jurors and studied their faces for a moment before she smiled sadly. “I’ve asked myself that, too, for some time now, and I don’t have a complete answer. But the closest I can come is that I am testifying today to take a little bit off the mountain of debt I owe for the life I’ve led and the things I’ve done.”

  “Are you saying you have a guilty conscience?”

  “That’s part of it,” she replied. “But I am also trying to learn to forgive myself. I take full responsibility for who I am, but I was also shaped by others. I didn’t grow up wanting to kill other human beings to make a living. When I was a child, I just wanted a family. And when I was a young woman, even after my training with the KGB, I still dreamed of falling in love and having a home of my own, a safe warm place where my man would be waiting at the end of a day. I confess I never wanted to bring children into a world such as this, but I wanted all the rest.”

  “Do you still want that?”

  The question seemed to catch Malovo by surprise. She was quiet for a moment as she looked out into space at nothing in particular. “I suppose deep inside of me that young woman, who dreams of the soldier she once loved, still exists. But the debt weighs on me, and too many people want me to account for it, for me to ever find that kind of peace. We shall see.”

  “Are you in danger by testifying today?”

  “Extreme danger,” Malovo said. “I am making accusations against powerful people both here and in Russia, not to overlook that ISIS will not be happy with Ajmaani’s role in wrecking the MIRAGE conspiracy.”

  “You mentioned that in a sense you ‘arranged’ to testify today. Can you explain what you meant by that?” Karp asked.

  As he spoke, Karp stood firm against the jury rail. The jurors were about to hear a fascinating tale straight out of a Bogart mystery movie, and he recalled how he’d first heard it that day after Jaxon and Fulton got her out of federal custody and transferred to his. She got her meeting alone with Ivgeny, which neither had ever explained to him and he didn’t want to know, and then she’d told him the whole story.

  “Some eighteen months ago I returned to Moscow from a mission in which I’d nearly lost my life,” Malovo began. “It certainly wasn’t the first time, nor was it the first time I’d had thoughts that it was time to get out of the business. I was tired of the danger, and the killing, but I was also tired of being a pawn of governments and powerful men who pretend to work for peace and prosperity yet all the while they thrive on chaos, poverty, and death. But in reality they are guilty of worse than anything I’ve ever done, and on a far greater scale, sometimes even duplicitously claiming it’s for ‘the greater good’ when really it’s only about power and wealth.”

  “How did your . . . I guess we could call it your crisis of conscience eventually lead you to the witness chair in a New York County Supreme Court?”

  “I have many enemies in Russia, but I also have very powerful friends,” Malovo said. “Some of them are involved in the acquisition and sale of black-market oil. The Russian economy relies on cheap oil. I believe it was your Senator John McCain who said that Russia is a ‘gas station masquerading as a country,’ and that is not far from the truth. Through them I learned of a complicated plan in which they, and their friends in the Kremlin, would have access to cheap refined oil that would not be otherwise available to them. I knew that the plan would benefit Russian, Syrian, and Iranian interests, as well as those of a well-connected, wealthy American, though I did not have details of the plan or names, except one. I learned that a former Red Army general and organized crime figure, Ivan Nikitin, was involved. We went way back—to the time of the Russian incursion into Afghanistan—and I knew he was enamored of me. I met with him and talked him into a job as his bodyguard and go-between.”

  “Did this plan also involve the terrorist group known as ISIS?” Karp asked.

  “Yes. You could say it was the—what is the American expression?—straw that breaks the camel’s back? But when I learned that the plan also involved those murderous monsters of ISIS, I knew I would attempt to stop it.”

  “Why?”

  “Again, there was something that rankled me about these countries and businessmen who publicly rattle their sabers and complain about the horrific abuses committed by ISIS and yet were ready to deal with the devil for money and power.”

  “Yet you just admitted to these jurors that you kill people following orders and for money?”

  Malovo nodded. “Yes, I know . . . What is the other expression, ‘Pot calls the kettle black’? I understand my own duplicity. But it is governments and people like these who create monsters like me and ISIS. You can kill me and bomb Islamic fanatics into oblivion. But we will be replaced until you stop the people at the top whose only desire is for power and money.”

  “So how did you plan to stop this conspiracy?”

  “I knew that I was being hunted by a U.S. counterterrorism agency headed by an agent named S. P. Jaxon,” Malovo said. “I knew he was a good man, incorruptible, and that if I could get him the information, he would know what to do with it. So I left a trail, so to speak, for him and his operatives to follow. I made my association with Nikitin known and appeared with him in public. And I made sure we were seen in various locales, such as Tehran, Damascus, and Istanbul, and that word got out we would be meeting with the ISIS leader Ghareeb al Taizi. I knew Jaxon would not be able to resist trying to capture me, Nikitin, and al Taizi, so I made it easy to find us.”

  “You said one of these locales was Istanbul, Turkey,” Karp said, as he walked over to the prosecution table, where Katz handed him two manila folders. “What was the purpose of that meeting?”

  “One of the main points of the plan was to ensure that U.S., Syrian, and Russian air strikes did not destroy oil facilities that ISIS was operating,” Malovo said. “Nikitin had already worked the Russian side with his friends in the Kremlin, as well as Damascus. However, the main player in the conspiracy, in fact the person who came up with the concept and the name, was an American. I did not know his name, only that he was extremely wealthy and had powerful connections in the U.S. government, particularly the administration. We went to Istanbul to work out some of the details with this man’s representative.”

  Walking over to the witness stand, Karp asked, “At one point were you asked by me to view a lineup and identify, if you could, this representative you met in Istanbul?”

  “Yes, I picked him out.”

  Karp handed a folder to her. “Is this a photograph of the man as he appeared that day in the lineup?”

  “Yes, that’s h
im, holding the number 6 against his chest,” Malovo said, handing the photo and folder back.

  “Your Honor, for the record, the witness has identified Shaun Fitzsimmons as the man she met in Istanbul.”

  “Same objection. All of this is improper,” Arnold said.

  “Overruled. The exhibit is accepted.”

  Karp handed the second folder to Malovo. “Did you meet with someone else in Istanbul?”

  “Yes. I met personally with the national security adviser, Sylvia Hamm.”

  “Do you recognize the two women in the photograph you’re holding?”

  Malovo nodded. “Yes. That’s me and Hamm. I had an accomplice take the photograph from the other side of the street.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “As part of my plan to expose this conspiracy.”

  “Where was Nikitin during this?”

  “In the hotel. He and Hamm did not want to be seen together.”

  “Why did you need to meet with Hamm?”

  “To give her the locations and coordinates of the ‘protected’ facilities, as well as the transportation routes that would be off-limits to air strikes.”

  “Did this plan have a name?”

  “Yes. MIRAGE, because it is illusory—not just because of the false oil facilities but also the chimera of a united front against ISIS and terrorism, when in fact they were supporting both.”

  “Were the details of this plan written down and saved to a data storage device?”

  “Yes. It was on a flash drive that al Taizi had created. He didn’t trust any of the others and created it as a way to blackmail them if they went back on their word. But I’d been introduced to him as Ajmaani, the Chechen jihadi, so he told me about it.”

  “Why did he tell you?”

  Malovo smiled. “I have certain charms that men like him find hard to resist.”

  “If I understood your testimony, your plan was to lead Jaxon and his counterterrorism team to this meeting in Syria. Did something go wrong with your plan?”