“IT STARTED OUT as a lark, really,” the old man continued. “One night, Paulo and I came back from a bombing run and were listening to the BBC news. A story about the latest volcanic threat on árvore Preta and a geologist who speculated that one piece falling off the volcano might be a titanic tsunami threat to the United States.
“That got me thinking. Why not just get some dynamite and give that cliff a push? I put it over the wire back to the big boys in Moscow, and they just ate it up. A month later, they sent out a team of engineers and surveyors who concluded that it could be done. They commissioned and typed up a plan for exactly how to do it, down to the last detail. I actually got a promotion for think-tanking that attack. And why not? It was genius.”
“Why didn’t they do it?”
“They were thinking about it in late 1980, I heard. There was some seismic activity, so they were going to make it look like an accident, but then Reagan got elected, and they thought if the truth ever came out, he was just crazy enough to let the nukes fly.”
“Why now, then?” I said. “Why destroy New York now? Does Russia want to bring back the glory days and start World War Three?”
“No,” said the old man. “We have no political agenda. I gave up all that political shit years ago. I’ve been a good honest crook for the last twenty years.”
He looked over at the younger Russian.
“I did it for my son here,” said the old man, patting the other guy on the back. “For him and for my grandson.”
“Your grandson?” I said, panicking, thinking there was still another nut out there we hadn’t found yet.
“My son, Mikhail,” the younger Russian said, staring almost sadly at me. “We did it for Mikhail.”
CHAPTER 105
THE YOUNGER RUSSIAN took a photo out of his wallet and walked over and crouched beside me.
“Do you recognize him?” he said.
The picture was of a pale young teenager with a slightly misshapen shaved head. His eyes weren’t exactly level with each other. He was more than a little loony-looking, but I kept that to myself.
“No. Should I know him?” I asked.
“Yes. He was on the cover of the Daily News last year.”
Too bad I read the Post, I thought, not knowing where this could be going.
“Did something happen to your son?”
“I’m a thinker, an introvert, a shut-in, some might say,” the Russian continued. “I like books. Math, physics, mechanics, engineering, abstract things. But back in my twenties, I was a little more outgoing, and I had a dalliance with a stripper.”
“One of my workers,” said the old man. “I owned four clubs in Miami at the time. It was his twenty-first birthday. The least I could do.”
Father of the year, I thought.
“So she got pregnant, and Mikhail was born. He had problems from day one. Birth defects, then a diagnosis of autism, then schizophrenia. All these stupid diagnoses just to say he was mentally not okay.”
“Years of psychologists and medication and my favorite—therapy,” said the old man, disgusted. “Bullshit! All of it!”
“They wanted to institutionalize him,” the son continued. “But I said no. I knew there was somebody in there. Somebody smart who could be funny and who just needed to be watched over. So I took care of him. I raised him by my side; he was with me all the time. He was a big pain in my ass, but he was smart. We would play chess and cards. He was so good at cards. Could add in his head almost as fast as me.”
The son looked down at the floor wistfully as he took a breath.
“In 2012, he was doing okay enough that I was able to leave him with an aide every once in a while. The aide, I thought, was a good man, but he turned out to be not so good. Because he smoked dope and fell asleep one morning while I was at an engineering conference in Philly, and Mikhail left the apartment alone.
“He got on the subway, and I don’t know what happened, but that morning in upper Manhattan, he pushed a woman in front of the number one train.”
“At a Hundred and Sixty-Eighth Street,” I said, vaguely remembering the case now. “That’s why you blew it up.”
“Yes,” the son said. “You’re catching on. See, Mikhail was taken into custody. I’m away. Mikhail has no one, no ID. He can’t speak for himself, but he was obviously mentally sick. They should have taken him to a hospital, yes?”
“No,” said the old man bitterly. “Turned out the Manhattan DA knew the female victim and pulled strings to have Mikhail booked, put immediately into the system. Without learning the details about Mikhail’s condition. Without thinking about any of the consequences. Do you know the name of the man who was the DA at the time?”
“Mayor Carl Doucette,” I said.
He nodded, smiled.
“The late mayor Carl Doucette,” he said.