Sympathy For the Devil by Terrence McCauley Read Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t just physical exhaustion, but didn’t want to dwell on Colin or what had happened in the park. Not yet. He just stood with the back of his head against the door and breathed; grateful for the cold steel of the vault door to dull his growing headache.
    The novelty of working in a vault below West Twenty-third Street had lost its effect on Hicks long ago. Three years before—when the Dean had assigned him to run the University’s New York office—his directive was clear: make the New York office a model for the University’s future.
    The first order of business had been to set up a proper base of operations.
    The University’s New York presence had been little more than a joke since the end of the Cold War in the early nineties. Not even 9/11 had done much to change that. The University’s Boston, D.C., and Los Angeles offices had been held in much higher regard and did the lion’s share of the University’s intelligence work within the United States. Even Miami had a higher standing.
    New York had become viewed as a vanity post; little more than window dressing and probably would’ve been closed altogether if the U.N. hadn’t been headquartered there.
    The New York office of that time bore little resemblance to the high-tech spaces shown on television shows and movies; with trim, young people in dark suits darting around as they sifted though intelligence data on the latest technological devices. Flat screen televisions, high-speed Internet connections and satellite surveillance.
    Until Hicks took over, the University’s New York office was simply a part-time operation run out of John Holloway’s cluttered York Avenue apartment. Holloway had been the University’s point man in the war against Communism once upon a time. But time catches up to all men, spies most of all, and Holloway gradually became a doddering academic more interested in the dusty first editions of his library and attending policy conferences than doing any actual intelligence work. The only information Holloway ever sent back to the Dean was whatever he’d managed to cobble together from the boozy gossip he’d fielded from minor diplomats at U.N. cocktail parties. Holloway had never been fond of technology, and thought his ability to forward Council on Foreign Relations e-newsletters to the Dean was something of an amazing technological accomplishment.
    The end came on one drizzly spring morning when the legendary John Holloway when a mailman found him lying dead between two parked cars off First Avenue. His dog—a white Pomeranian he’d named Publius—licking his face.
    The University’s private autopsy report revealed Old Holloway had died of cardiac arrest due to clogged arteries from years of too much pâté and red wine at too many cocktail parties.
    The Dean mourned the death of his mentor, but when he named Hicks as the New York Office Head, it was with a clear mission: make the New York Office relevant again.
    The Dean had given him a healthy budget to find a place and advised him to hide in plain sight. Rent an office or buy a large apartment some place and keep a low profile. But regular office buildings were difficult to secure and often more trouble than they were worth. Running the operation out of an apartment or condo was risky, too. Supers with pass keys. Nosey neighbors. Even burglars.
    He needed something quiet and not easily found. Something without windows or other tenants. In New York, that was a tall order, but not impossible.
    Because Hicks had a plan.
    While working in Tel Aviv a few months before coming to New York, he’d learned of a local developer looking to expand his family’s fortune by investing in Manhattan real estate. He had just closed on a row of dilapidated townhouses in the west Twenties. This particular developer came from a strong Israeli family who despised the Palestinians. This particular developer had built a fortune of his own by quietly accepting Palestinian investments in his