Fortunately, the car bomb did not detonate.

The terrorist turned out to be Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen. And, not surprisingly, Shahzad wasn’t upset about the health care bill. After pleading guilty in court he said, “I consider myself a Mujahid, a Muslim-soldier.” He was upset, as he put it, over “American occupation of Muslim Lands.”

Shortly after the attack, Bloomberg prematurely asserted that there was no evidence suggesting the bomber was part of any recognized terror network. Shahzad later told the court he trained with the Pakistani Taliban to learn bomb-making and other related skills.

Could it be that Bloomberg has underestimated the threat of Islamist terror, or is there another agenda?

The issue has again become relevant in recent days. The New York Times ran a series of articles and editorials blaming the NYPD for using the film The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America as part of their counter-terrorism training.

The articles calling the film “a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims” and a “Hateful Film” are riddled with inaccuracies and omissions.

Following publication of the articles, Mayor Bloomberg stated that NYPD used “terrible judgment” in showing the film, despite admitting that he had never seen it.

We were not aware that the NYPD was using the film, but when we learned of it some months ago, we were pleased that the officers would have an opportunity to learn about the indoctrination taking place in certain segments of Muslim society in America. The film reveals what viewers are unlikely to see on the evening news: What terrorists, radical preachers and Islamists are saying in their own words, in their own mosques and media, to their followers.

The film exposes how radicals employ the dual strategies of “violent Jihad,” along with a “cultural Jihad,” through which Islamist groups use coercion and non-violent means to gradually expand their influence over Western society.

Now, Mayor Bloomberg, The New York Times and others want to bar law enforcement officers from seeing the film. The question is, why?

We reject, outright, the charge that our film is anti-Muslim or that it casts a shadow over the entire Muslim community. In fact, we go to great lengths throughout the film to differentiate the radical Islamists from peaceful Muslims. The film is narrated by, Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a devout Muslim-American, who has dedicated his life to exposing the threat of radical Islam.

Our critics have failed to mention these points and have chosen not to challenge the film on the merits of its thesis or content.

Perhaps the reason Mayor Bloomberg wants The Third Jihad banned is the same reason he insinuated the Times Square bomber was a health care terrorist — namely, CAIR.

CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) is one of many Muslim interest groups that purport to represent the Islamic community in America but in reality have well established ties to Hamas and other terror groups.

CAIR was designated by the U.S. Justice Department for its role in terror financing during the nation’s largest-ever trial on the subject. As a result, the FBI has officially severed all ties with the “advocacy organization.”

Outside of its support for terror organizations, CAIR works to quickly and effectively to silence any discussions about radical Islam by playing the racism card and accusing critics of Islamophobia. CAIR’s devices are effective.

As soon as the current story broke, CAIR immediately branded the film “anti-Muslim propaganda” in a press release. This was followed by a CAIR-led protest on the steps of City Hall calling for the resignation of the NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly.

The entire episode could have been a chapter in The Third Jihad. We are now seeing “cultural Jihad” in action. In order to avoid agitating Muslim constituents, Mayor Bloomberg  and Commissioner Kelly are backing away from the film, regardless of its merits.

The net result is that CAIR, a designated Muslim interest group with ties to terror financing, is now telling the NYPD how it should go about fighting terror. If that’s not the ultimate act of subversion, I don’t know what is.

—–

Daily News:

Tony-winning actress Ellen Barkin rang in the new year in her typical brash style — uncorking a profanity-laced Twitter tirade against the NYPD and Mayor Bloomberg after watching the predawn arrests of suspected Occupy Wall Street scofflaws near her West Village townhouse.

Does the video back up Barkin’s description of the incident on her Twitter feed?

HuffPo:

“I was trying 2 make my way 2 young girl they had thrown in2 the van.She was not a protester.Was not drunk.She was walking home,” she wrote.

Just before Barkin said she was shoved, she began chronicling the police scuffles, writing, “Walking home…13th & 6th, police making random arrests of non protesters.Young girl in police van screaming”I’m just trying 2 get home” and then “People being thrown in police vans, arrested for “jaywalking”What happened to the NYPD of my youth?Who are u all?Shame shame on u all.”

Barkin is an outspoken progressive and has been an open advocate of the Occupy Wall Street movement; some of that movement’s protestors were active throughout the city on New Year’s Eve, including a brief retaking of their one-time base, Zuccotti Park.

Later on, Barkin slammed New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, writing, “Fuck all of u,Bloomberg & every1 goose-stepping behind u.I cannot believe what I am seeing.U protect nothing.U ARE the violence in my city.”

Full piece here.

NOTE: This post has been updated to provide more context.

Meanwhile, inside a secret nuclear facility, the evil German billionaire, Emanuel Skorzeny is about to make the deal of a lifetime with the Iranians

CHAPTER 44

Qom

“Why are you alone, sister?”

These were not words Maryam wished to hear, especially from a member of the morality police.  The Iranian vice cops – “vice” in this case applying to the very existence of women – were not as notorious as the mutaween of Saudi Arabia, or the Taliban of Afghanistan, but they were plenty dangerous.

She tensed as she answered.  “But I am modestly dressed, worshipping at the sacred mosque.”

They moved closer to her, boxing her in, forcing her into an alley.  Maryam glanced around and saw there was nobody else in sight.  Whatever was going to happen was going to have to happen fast.

“Where is your husband sister?”

“I have… he is away, on state business.  But he will be here soon, that I can assure you.”

“Then where is your father?”

“My father, may Allah bless him, is dead.”

“Your brother?”

“Alas, I have no brothers.”

The two police looked at each other.  In Iran, with one of the highest proportions of young people in the world, everybody had brothers and sisters.  She was obviously lying.

“Sister,” said the first cop, “I am afraid we are compelled by force of holy law to request that you accompany us.”

Maryam kept edging backward, into the alley, away from the crowds.  She knew the religious police were lightly armed, with knives for protection and sticks with which to beat helpless women.  This is what came of a country that had reduced some of the proudest, most glamorous women in the world into servile, cringing slaves.  They had no fear.

They were about to learn different.  They were about to take a very fast trip from the seventh century to the 21^st.  And they weren’t going to like it very much.

“Perhaps,” she said, “we can discuss this in a more private place.”

One of the dirty little secrets of Iran was that whores flourished everywhere.  Probably not since Dickensian London had the world’s oldest profession commanded such a large part of a nation’s economy, or its attention, or its fantasy life.  She need not say anything, merely hint.  They would get the message.  They would take the bait.

The men grinned at each other.  Fringe benefits were part of the job.  A doorway would be good enough.

Maryam took a deep breath and said a silent prayer.  This would have to be fast and lethal.

She moved back into a doorway, letting them come to her, feeling their hands on her body.  She needed them to do just that, to drop their guard, to reach for her with a repressed passion that would dull their other senses until it was too late.

Closer… closer…

She raised her veil as one of them moved in to kiss her, and her hand strayed to the privates of the second cop.  She could feel his mouth on hers, his tongue seeking hers, feel the tumescent excitement of the second man…

Now.

She bit the tongue off and wrenched the other man down, hard.  They both screamed, but their screams were immediately cut off as she drew the knife from the scabbard of the first cop and slashed his throat.  Gurgling, he fell into the second man, who was still in agony.  As he put up his hands to fend off the falling body, she plunged the knife into his heart.  As he died, she saw the look of disbelief in his eyes, that a woman had done this to him, and then a look of bliss, as if all his suspicions of the evil sex were, by his death, finally justified.

“Fuck you,” she said in English.

She pulled both the bodies into the doorway as best she could.  They’d be found almost immediately, that she knew.  She wiped the knife clean of fingerprints and placed it back in its sheath.

She was wet with blood, but the blood would not show against the back of the chador, and in this heat it would dry quickly.  She just had to stay away from people for a while.  And wait… wait for him.

And then, in the greatest miracle of her life, for which she would forever give thanks and praise to Allah, there he was.  She knew him immediately, saw right through his disguise, knew by the cock of his head and the way he walked, the way he moved, that it could be no other.  That at last he was come, and that she was whole again, and that no matter what now happened she knew the truth.

He moved toward her quickly but without haste.  Still nobody around.

“Hello, Frank,” she said quietly.

“My name’s not Frank,” he said.

“I know it isn’t,” she said.  “Everything you’ve told me since the day we met was a lie.”

“Would you have had it any other way?”

“Do I have to answer that question now?  How did you find me?

In answer, he reached inside her chador, until he found what he was looking for.  The smart phone with which she’d signaled him.  “Thank Allah for GPS,” he said.

“You’re late.”

“And they’re dead,” he said, looking at the corpses.  “So let’s ankle.”

“Home?”

He gave that look of his that she loved so well.  The one that said, are you kidding?  “You are home, remember?  And he’s here.”  She didn’t have to ask who “he” was.

“He’s looking for her,” she replied.  He didn’t have to ask who “she” was.

“Then I guess we both have jobs to do.”

“I’m not going to leave her.”

“That’s what I just said.”

“There’s more to it, right?”

“Would I be here if there wasn’t?” That was the answer she expected, but didn’t want.  “We haven’t got much time and we have a lot to do, including not getting ourselves killed and saving the world, not necessarily in that order, so let’s get a move on.”

“Where?”

He brought his face close to hers.  “As long as we’re together,” he said, “Qom is as good a place as any.”

*****

“You double-crossed me, you infidel bastard,” said Col. Zarin.

“I am an infidel in many faiths,” replied Skorzeny coolly, “so please do not think that your cheap superstitious imprecations can frighten me.”

They were in the heart of the nuclear complex on the outskirts of Qom, deep inside a mountain, where the uranium enrichment process had been taking place right under the noses of the U.N. inspectors, who preferred to look in the direction of the known facility at Natanz, rather than anywhere else, just in case they might find something.  Emanuel Skorzeny had no illusions that he was allowed admittance because he was a welcome guest of the Islamic Republic.  He was here because they were business partners, and the minute they ceased being business partners, his privileges would be revoked with extreme prejudice.

And he had a business deal for Col. Zarin.

“I have a proposition for you,” he said.

“I am not interested in your proposition,” replied the colonel.  “You have used me, and jeopardized my future and the future of my family.  They have my voice on tape, threatening this detective Saleh, may Allah curse him and his seed.  I should kill you for what you have done.”

“Not for what I have done, Col. Zarin.  For what he has done.  And I am about to deliver him – and her – to you.”

“Why should I believe you?”  Col. Zarin looked at the clock on the wall.  That, thought Skorzeny, was a measure of just how backward this country was – not only that one would look at a clock on the wall to see what time it was, but that there even were clocks on the wall.

Skorzeny ignored the question.  “I propose a trade.  One that will enrich us both.”

Col. Zarin’s glance fell upon Mlle. Derrida.  “Why do you bring your whore to a meeting of men?” he snarled.

“Because she’s not my whore,” Skorzeny answer levelly.  “And I’ll thank you not to talk about her in such a disrespectful manner.  You savages are simply going to have to learn that not all the world subscribes to your Dark Ages notion of right and wrong.  Your entire civilization is not worth a Mass, although Paris is.”

“Then why are you giving us Paris?” laughed Col. Zarin.

“Because Paris no longer worth a Mass, either.  But do not think you have triumphed.  It is I, Emanuel Skorzeny, who has triumphed, and you are a mere instrument of my will.  I am greater than any God, greater than your Allah, and I shall have my revenge.”

Col. Zarin’s hand stole toward his sidearm,  “This is blasphemy.  I should kill you for it.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” replied Skorzeny coolly.  “Because my death makes you a dead man.  It makes your wife a widow and your children orphans.  It brings down the full wrath of the West upon your pitiful heads.  For there will come a time, and soon, when your breast-beating and braggadocio will be as nothing.  I am all that is standing in the way of the West’s vengeance upon you.  So listen.”

He opened his briefcase, and took out the computer.  “This is the very latest example of NSA/CSS technology.  It was designed by their top operative, a man with whom I have come into contact, both personally and professionally, on several occasions, each of them unpleasant in the extreme.  I am prepared to make you a present of it, in exchange for Miss Harrington, who can be of absolutely no use to you at this point.”

“Do you love her that much?”

“Yes,” said Skorzeny.  It was the simplest answer her had ever given to any question in his life.

“And what does love mean?”

For the first time in his life, he felt old, tired, nearing the end. No, it could not be possible.  All his life had been devoted to one thing, to one purpose – him – and suddenly came this realization.  That there was something beyond him.  Not the ritualistic rote of some alien liturgy, but something more elemental, something more primitive than even religious superstition.

Her.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

Mlle. Derrida could sit silent no longer.  She had no use for these Iranians and their imported desert faith.  She was a Frenchwoman, the heiress of Voltaire and Descartes, Rousseau and Rimbaud and Sartre and Becket and her namesake, Derrida.  She believed in rational thought.  Cogito ergo sum. That was her faith, and that was why she had faith in him.  “Of course you do,” she said.

“Love is what is left when thought has fled – not religion, not faith, but love.  Love is what drives us.  If there is a God, and like you I do not believe that for a moment… but if there is, then love is what brings us closer to him.  Not haste.  Not vengeance.  Neither orders, nor rituals.  Nothing from above, or below.  Just us, humanity – what we French fought and lost our Revolution for.  We sacrificed our ideals on the altar of the guillotine, and we learned never to do that again.  And now here were are.”

She turned to Skorzeny.  “Ger her back, sir,” she said, “and then let’s go home.  I want to go home. Take me home.”

Skorzeny indicated the laptop.  “Very simple,” he said.  “The computer for the girl.  You get – if you can reverse-engineer it, and get past its built-in defenses – a glide path into the heart of the Great Satan.  With this, you can destroy them.  No need for bombs, nukes, Shahab missiles.  No need for the permanent war against the West.  You can end it all now, right here, right now.  Break their Black Widow, corrupt her, seduce her, turn into the whore you’ve always known she was.  I don’t care.  In fact, I endorse it.

He pushed the laptop across the table at Col. Zarin.  “But give my own Black Widow back to me.  Give me Miss Harrington.”

Col. Zarin looked at the laptop.  He looked at Skorzeny. He looked at Mlle. Derrida.

Skorzeny looked at him.  Neither of them blinked.

On the wall, the clock kept ticking. At last –

“I will take you to her,” Col. Zarin said.

It’s the third in the series that began with Hostile Intent in 2009 and continued with last year’s Early Warning. This volume concludes what I call the Skorzeny Trilogy, after the chief bad, Emanuel Skorzeny, the shadowy German billionaire who’s waging a private war against both Devlin, the American president, Jeb Tyler, and the West as a presidential election looms.

In this excerpt, the publishing mogul Jake Sinclair, who’s also made it his mission to destroy Tyler, has just learned of a terrible accident in California, and gets his best reporter — the sexy Principessa Stanley (who figured prominently in Early Warning) — on the case:

CHAPTER ELEVEN

New York City

The news was breaking as Jake Tyler entered the offices on Sixth Avenue.  Normally he didn’t come to New York much, certainly not since they’d moved the corporate base of operations to Los Angeles in some choice Century City property he just happened to own.

He’d flown in on his private jet, and if there was one rule he had on his private jet it was that he was not to be disturbed for any reason whatsoever, short of Selenites landing at Bowling Green or, worse, Carbon Beach.  Or Elvis, reappearing in Branson.

“What is it, Benny?” he said to Ben Bernstein as he entered the editor-in-chief’s office.  Once the job had been called executive editor, and to be the executive editor of the New York Times had been the pinnacle of American journalism.  So of course that had to go – he, Jake Sinclair, was the pinnacle of American journalism, and there would never be another one of him.  Editor-in-chief was as far as he would go with people whose salaries he paid.

“Cows, Mr. Sinclair,” came the reply.  “Lots and lots of cows.”

“So what?  We got cows right here in New York State, somewhere.  Cows all over the Midwest.  Cows in India, sacred cows I think they call them.  So what’s so special about these cows?”

Bernstein kept a poker face.  He had no opinion about his new boss and he did his damnedest to make sure his expression reflected that scrupulous neutrality.  “These cows are all dead,” he said.

“Where?”

“On that big cattle ranch up near Coalinga.”

Sinclair’s visage expressed his distaste for Twenty Questions.  “Where’s that?”

“Central California, sir,” replied Bernstein, backtracking.  “I assumed that, since you’re from there, California I mean, that –“

“You think I drive to San Francisco?”  Sinclair was rapidly losing interest in the story.  “What does it mean?”  Is it news I can use?”

In Bernstein’s experience, the only story the chief was interested in was the ongoing political story, so he quickly reframed.  “It means Tyler’s got another disaster on his hands, sir.  Somebody’s poisoned the California water supply.”

That stopped Sinclair in his tracks. “What?” Then he was moving again, double-time.

Bernstein watched the boss disappear into his private office at the end of the hall.  He’d only been inside once or twice, but from what he’d seen it was more like a fortress than an office, completely secure, with dedicated phone lines and all the latest electronic gadgetry.  Not that Sinclair probably knew how to use most of it, but to men like Jake Sinclair the display of such equipment was at least as important as its actual use.

Sinclair shut the door behind him and turned to the ranks of TV monitors.  The sun may have sent on the British Empire, but it was always coming up somewhere on his.  Sure enough, Bernstein was right – dead cows everywhere.  People, too.  He didn’t much care how the paper played the story the next day – newspapers were so retro they were almost chic – but he very much cared how his news networks were handling it – and so far he was not seeing what he wanted to see.

He reached for one of the secure lines and dialed her secure number.  She answered on the second ring.  She spoke first.

“Remember what I told you about puzzles?  Ciphers?  Cryptograms?”  He did remember.  That was the day they were in the bathroom at his office in Century City, with the shower on, the day she’d pulled him toward her in the steam, kissed him and told him that if he was ever late for another meeting with her she would kill him.  “Well, this is the piece of the puzzle we’ve been waiting for.  Now use it.”

“I’m not sure I under—“

“How did you ever manage to get anywhere in this life?” came the voice at the other end of the line.  He had no idea where she was at this moment, somewhere out on the hustings, as they used to call them, whatever hustings were.  Somewhere putting her plan into action.  “Honestly, I think you are the stupidest man I have ever met in my life.”

There was nothing to say.  His job was to say nothing.  So far, so good.

“Have you got the package ready?  The October Surprise?”

“That would be the complete dossier on Jeb Tyler – every bit of dirt and mud and slur and slander and innuendo that the combined newsgathering forces of the Sinclair Empire could dig up.  And was there ever plenty of it.  It was so explosive that it would finish Tyler the month before the voters went to the polls, except that they would not be merciful.  The material would not be released all at once.  No, it would dribbled out day by day, each story more damaging than the last, some of on TV, some on the radio, some in the papers and magazines.

Beginning the first week of October, every day would be sheer misery for the incumbent president, but there would be nothing he could do about it.  He could not withdraw from the campaign, because it would be too late to replace him on the ballot.  He couldn’t concede in advance, because the propriety of elections would have to be observed.  Day after day he was going to have to sit there in the Oval Office and take his beating like a man.  And then be destroyed the first Tuesday in November.

Now that was something Jake Sinclair was really looking forward to.  And he knew two other people who would enjoy the spectacle even more than he did.  The first was the woman on the other end of the phone, Angela Hassett, the governor of Rhode Island whose meteoric rise to power was about to be crowned with the highest office in the land.

The other was a man he had never met, never seen and never spoken to – communicated with solely by cutouts and go-betweens, each similarly invisible.  But a very rich man and the man who had made him, Jake Sinclair, a modestly rich man his lofty standards.  This man wanted Jeb Tyler gone and would spend any amount of money to achieve that objective.

Anonymously, of course.  Untraceably, of course.  Electoral proprieties must be observed.

“Tell me that you have it.  Tell me that you have everything,” she commanded.  Involuntarily, he glanced over his shoulder.  Even here in his inner sanctum, he could feel her presence, and it wouldn’t have surprised him at all to learn that, somehow, she’d had him bugged.

“I’ve got it – well, almost all of it.  There’s still a couple of things we’re trying to chase down, but I have top people on it.  Top people.”

Was that a chuckle or a chortle coming through the ether.  “I’ll bet you do,” said Angela Hassett, “and I’ll bet I know just who she is, too.”

The line went dead.  He was alone.

Sinclair sat in his chair, looking out the window overlooking midtown Manhattan.  That woman did something to him.  He could feel it.  There was something deliciously erotic about fantasizing an affair with the next president of the United States.  With the first female president of the United States.  With her.  So what if they were both married.  He still hadn’t quite decided Jenny II’s fate yet, and as for Angela’s husband… well, he could be dealt with down the line.

Somewhere, a soft chime sounded, like something you’d hear in a Buddhist rock garden.  Jake Sinclair hated buzzers and refused to be interrupted by the ring of a telephone, the dull thunk of an incoming email message or God forbid one of those Twitter things.

“What is it?”  The chime automatically activated a microphone that allowed him to communicate with his secretary, whose name he could never quite remember.

“Ms. Stanley, sir.”

Just the girl he wanted to see.  “Send her in.”

The lock on the door buzzed and in walked his favorite television correspondent.  Her work during the siege of Times Square had been outstanding, and the fact that she’d gotten herself temporarily kidnapped by, well, they never did figure out exactly who, had been a career enhancer.

“Mr. Sinclair?” she said.

She was beautiful, even more beautiful than she was on television, full-figured but wholesome, sexy but innocent – just the way the viewers liked them.  About the only thing that had changed was her hair, but it was growing back nicely; on the air, she wore a wig, so nobody ever knew she had been practically scalped.

He didn’t rise.  To get up would signal weakness to the help.  She didn’t sit down   To sit down would signal servility toward the boss.

“Have you been looking into what I asked you, Principessa?” he inquired.  He loved that name, and wondered if it was really hers.

“Yes, Mr. Sinclair,” she said. She moved forward to the desk and now was standing just opposite him.  “Just a couple more pieces of the puzzle left to gather.”

He smiled.  “Very good.  How long do I have to wait?”

She smiled back.  What a smile she had.  “Won’t be long now.  In the meantime, there’s this.”

She put an old BlackBerry down on his desk.  “What I am supposed to do with this?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said.  “Just listen.”

Who knew that BlackBerrys doubled as tape recorders?  That they had little voice-memo doohickies, what did the kids call them today, applications – yes, “apps” – and that they could record –

The babble coming out the smart phone was like no language he had ever heard before.  Arabic or Iranian, rapid-fire, and then, at the end, this:

“Because I am sending you to hell.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, reaching for the phone, but Principessa swept it back up and slipped it into her pocket.

“You wanted a puzzle, I got you a puzzle,” she said.  “Now all you have to do is figure it out.”

She was already at the door:

“That’s what I pay you for,” he said.

“Pay me more,” she replied, and then she was gone.

A second excerpt from “Shock Warning” will appear tomorrow.

It’s dinner time for the Reagan clan, and the extended family of CBS’ Blue Bloods is crammed around the table, sharing the news that their parish priest has been sent off to Bolivia after allegations of sexual advances, in an episode airing tonight (10 ET/PT). 

It’s the only time the show’s entire main cast, led by Tom Selleck, Donnie Wahlberg, Will Estes and Bridget Moynahan, comes together in its Brooklyn studio. 

“Luckily we don’t have to eat anything crazy like cheesecake or Chinese food,” says Moynahan (who plays daughter Erin, an assistant DA) of Bloods‘ signature scene, which caps every episode and gives writers a chance to show the family debating the issues raised by the cases.

“I think the audience responds to these things more than any part of the show, really. It’s a place where you get everybody’s point of view.” 

It could be the tight-knit family, or Selleck’s star appeal, or the unusual blending of a family drama with a sturdy police procedural, but Bloods is this season’s most-watched new series. It chugs away on Friday nights, with an average of 12.4 million viewers, and is considered a lock for a second season. …

Bloods connects its cases to the multi-generational family, led by police commissioner Frank (Selleck), a stoic police commissioner who’s sometimes at odds with a mayor who appointed him when his last pick didn’t work out. 

“He was a way of getting the mayor off the hook for choosing a corrupt man,” Selleck says of his character. “His biggest flaw is he cares too much; he has a hyperactive sense of responsibility.”

His dad Henry (Len Cariou), a retired commissioner, is a grandfatherly fixture at those dinners, even though Cariou, 71, is actually just five years older than Selleck. Erin (Moynahan), a divorced single mom, is the by-the-book legal compass. But Danny, a hotheaded cop, is an Iraq War vet who “may bend the rules because he knows he’s going to get away with it more,” Wahlberg says.

Full piece here.

CHAPTER ONE 

Ramapo, New York 

Thursday, October 18, 1990; noon 

“Bob and them found it just over there.” The woman smacked her lips in recollection. She was only about forty, but she looked sixty. One of her front teeth was missing, and the others were crooked and yellow. Her hair hung in greasy strands around her forehead, and there was a large mole on her left cheek. Her hands were wrinkled and gnarled. Arthritis, thought Byrne, and bad nutrition. Life was tough in the country. Almost as tough as it was in town. “We live out here pretty much by our lonesomes,” she said. “Like it that way.”

Lieutenant Francis X. Byrne of the New York City Police Department asked the woman for her name. Jean, Jean Brandmelder. He wrote it down as she spelled it out. Byrne followed the woman through the clearing in the woods. Even though it was mid-October, the weather was still warm; hot, even. “Bob and them was out hunting this morning, early,” Jean explained. “But really it was the dogs. They all of a sudden set to barkin’ and Jimmy – that’s my son Jimmy right there – went over to see what’s all the fuss about.” Another smack of the lips. Byrne took notes as he walked, and hoped he would be able to read them later. The nuns always said his handwriting sucked, and the nuns were always right.

“Bob and them” were standing near the body. Bob was Mr. Brandmelder. He was a big, heavy-set, older man with a weak handshake and the outsized girth that comes from a rigorous diet of McDonald’s, Coke and Cheez Doodles, one of the rural widebodies; Byrne thought he looked and sounded just like Andy Devine. Or maybe, with enough eye shadow, just Divine. Over his shoulder, Bob was carrying a shotgun, broken to show it was unloaded. On his face, he wore a gap-toothed grin. “Howdy,” said Bob as Byrne approached. He was pointing. “Over there.” He had a slight accent of indeterminate origin.

At first Byrne thought Brandmelder was indicating Jimmy. The son, about eighteen, was a sallow, rat-faced kid – looks obviously ran in the family – with a nasty glint in his eyes. A normal teenager would be horrified at what he had just found, but not Jimmy. He, too, was smiling. He shuffled his feet and spat on the ground by way of greeting. “Hey,” he said. Next to him stood his buddy, Billy Walters, a dirty, mean-looking blond with a wispy mustache and a tattoo of a girl straddling a dagger.

A dull hum rose from the hard, packed ground: flies. There hadn’t been much rain lately, and there were no apparent tracks or footprints.

On the surrounding hills the trees were nearing their autumnal foliage peak, but Byrne found nothing in the scenery to admire. He hated coming up here to the Rockland County boondocks, upstate, across the Hudson and a world away from New York City. The Ramapo hills were alien territory, a largely inaccessible hill country populated by folks who were all more closely related to each other than the law allowed – a little slice of Appalachia on the border between New Jersey and New York State, just sixty miles from midtown. Anything could happen here, and anything did. It was the perfect place for a dump job like this.

Plus his ex-wife Mary Claire, was living over in Nyack, nursing her bitterness and cashing his alimony check every month, which was how he knew she was still alive.

Byrne bent down to look at the body, snapping on a pair of rubber gloves and beginning his examination. The homicide detective was thirty-three years old, young for his rank. At five feet ten inches and one hundred and seventy-five pounds, he was about average size for a cop, and although he was waging a vigorous counterattack in the gym as often as possible, he could feel his body already starting to slide. Still, at least he had his hair, which was something not every guy could claim, and there was no gray in his light brown locks. Looking at him in his off-the-rack gray suit, one would never guess that he spent most of his time communing with dear, recently departed total strangers; he might be mistaken for a middle manager in a struggling business, the kind of guy you saw on the subway, wondered what he did, and felt vaguely sorry for. Only his eyes, blue, hard, cold and indifferent, hinted at his unpredictable, explosive temper.

Byrne contemplated the naked, nameless victim, and felt the little thrill he always got when staring into the face of death. He had graduated from Fordham University and few had expected him to follow his father into the department – it was such an Irish-American cliché – but here he was, right where he wanted to be. Not because of the human tragedy, or to protect the innocent, or to satisfy society’s need for justice or any of that blather. Not even out of a sense of revenge for his dad, who had been killed in the line of duty when Byrne was still a boy. He had become a cop because murder fascinated him.

“First we didn’t know what it was,” someone said, and Byrne turned to look for the speaker. It was Jimmy, the son. “The sun was just comin’ up real bright, and with the light right in my eyes well, hell, I thought it was a damn possum.” He looked down at the body. “It bein’ so white an’ all.”

The state cops who had found the abandoned BMW 318i with diplomatic license plates had had the good sense to leave the crime scene alone. The corpse lay as it had been discovered, on its side near the base of a tree, the face turned away and partially covered by shoulder-length sandy hair. The body was entirely naked and bent slightly at the waist, the knees pulled up towards the chin; assume the position, thought Byrne to himself: the fetal position. The skin was milky white, gradually fading in death to a pale gray. The buttocks were smooth and hairless, as were the arms and legs. “Give me some room, please,” said Byrne.

Thank God it wasn’t a popper. All cops hated those exploding human sausages that had been left to stew in their own juice and then erupted when you looked at them cross-eyed. He had one a few months ago, a young black or Hispanic woman – it was hard to tell, given the state of decomposition – who had been raped, brained with a boulder, and buried in a shallow grave at the north end of Central Park; for some reason, no one had felt the necessity to report her disappearance for several days. When Byrne and his Crime Scene Unit tried to move the body, her stomach came apart in their hands and the intestines slithered out. It took him weeks to get the smell out of his nostrils.

The whine of the forensic photographer’s camera was intrusive. It felt like they were making a snuff film. The camera, an Olympia 35mm with a 50mm lens shooting Kodak Tri-X color film, fired again as Byrne sketched the scene in his  notebook. “I think this guy’s ready for his close-up,” said Vinnie Mancuso, an investigator attached to the medical examiner’s office, as he set up the next shot.

The corpse held its jackknifed position as Byrne rolled the body over.  By the looks of things, the victim had been dead eight to twelve hours; rigor mortis had begun to set in, and the skin’s lividity was fixed, or would have been: there was almost no blood left in the body, and none on the ground, which indicated that the killing had taken place elsewhere.

“Muthafucka!” exclaimed Mancuso, who had thought he’d seen everything and probably had and yet was still taken by surprise. For even in the welter of dried blood and butchered flesh it was clear that the body was that of a man whose entire manhood was missing, the penis and testicles excised by a sharp, scalpel-like instrument. Byrne guessed he had been alive at the time. What was the point of cutting somebody’s dick off unless he was still around to enjoy the experience? For some reason, the image of an Aztec executioner, ripping the beating heart from a victim’s chest and exhibiting it to him just as he died, came to Byrne. Thank God the Aztecs weren’t around any more; they’d probably be pouring over the border from Mexico, opening restaurants, driving gypsy cabs and performing virgin sacrifices in the Bronx – if they could find any virgins. Who said New York never got any breaks?

Gently, Byrne brushed the hair back from face, which might have been handsome once, when it was a face. One bullet, fired from behind, had exited through the right side of the head in the occipital-parietal area, blowing out the side of the skull and a good deal of the brain; at least one other shot, apparently from the front, had smashed through the bridgework. The eyes were pale blue and sightless. The throat was cut through the carotid artery.

The face, however, was untouched by the carnage. Was it still a pathetic fallacy to ascribe emotion to an inanimate object that once had been a human being? No matter how horrible the manner of their deaths, the deceased often had a peaceful look upon their faces, as if they were only sleeping, but this victim was extraordinary: not just peaceful, but at peace, like a saint who just joyously embraced his martyrdom.

Now for the distasteful part. He knelt, spread the dead man’s buttocks apart and dropped an object into a large evidence bag. It was a polished ebony dildo with a silver tip, about seven inches long.

“Wonder what the good sisters would say about this baby?” said Mancuso, who was widely regarded as having both a vile sense of humor and encyclopedic knowledge of restaurants. Mancuso was from the Bronx, but a branch of the family had owned a restaurant in New Orleans, and he always knew where to eat; hell, the man could even find food in New Jersey. “They’d probably take a shine to it. Did I ever tell you about Sister Ann Miriam, the one I had back in eighth grade? We used to call her Sister Sam, and a couple of the kids swore that underneath her habit she….”

Byrne wasn’t listening to Vincent Mancuso’s Catholic school reminiscences. He was looking at the markings on the dildo. Cyrillic, but whether Greek or Russian or even Bulgarian he could not tell. Not for the first time, he wished he had paid more attention to his language studies in college. Maybe if he had, he’d be in the FBI like his brother. The way New York was getting, it was like the Tower of Babel on the streets. Nobody committed crimes in English anymore.

The Brandmelders and Billy were standing silently nearby; Jean’s mouth was working, but she was saying nothing. She might have been chewing gum, or tobacco. The others stared at their feet. “You ought to see the car,” said Jimmy. Byrne sighed: these fag killings were always so messy.

“Let’s take a look at it,” Byrne said to Mancuso, and together they headed over to the BMW, which had been left on the road, a rude foreign intruder in Chevy Impala heaven. It was a new two-door coupe, black with light gray interior.  “German car, ain’t it?” said Jimmy. “We’re German. Brandmelder. Means ‘fire-alarm’.” He seemed proud of his knowledge.

Byrne, however, wasn’t interested in Jimmy’s ethnic derivation right now. “I want a double-check on the registration,” he ordered. “And I want prints on this vehicle, inside and out, make sure Aprahamian runs ‘em through every AFIS system he can think of, full liaison with the FBI. And everybody keeps their mitts off the car, okay?”  One of the two members of the Bronx-based Crime Scene Unit who had made the journey north with him – his name was Andersen – went running back to the squad car to do the detective’s bidding.

The vehicle was immaculately clean inside, if you didn’t count the bloodstains on the driver’s side. No trash, no old newspapers in the back seat, no candy bar wrappings on the floor, no old stained Styrofoam coffee cups. Just a car phone, and nothing else.

“Let’s also get the blood type off this mess, gentlemen,” said Byrne, continuing to make notes. It seemed clear that the stains, while extensive, were not arterial bleeding. If the victim’s throat had been cut while he was in the car, the gouts sprayed forth by the pumping heart would have covered the windshield and been spritzed all around the interior of the vehicle. These stains, on the other hand, were pretty much confined to the seat, as if he had bled heavily while driving. Driving where? Surely not all the way up here, unless he had stopped along the way to change into his birthday suit, cut his own throat and shoot himself in the head several times before continuing on to his final destination.

Mancuso had disappeared under the front seat, but came up empty-handed. The only thing in the vehicle appeared to be the keys, which sat in the ignition awaiting their owner’s return. They were going to have a long wait.

“Check the glove compartment, Vinnie,” said Byrne.

Mancuso popped it open. “Nothing here, Frankie,” he said.

“Gotta be,” commanded Byrne. “Always is. Pennies, nickels, dimes quarters, cassettes, Kleenex, Kotex, old maps, a woman’s panties, something. Look some more. Nobody’s this neat.”

Again, Mancuso came up empty-handed, and shrugged. “See for yourself, boss,” he said. “No registration, no rental agreement, no insurance card, nothin’. And sure as hell no gal’s panties. In fact, no panties of any kind.”

At that moment, Andersen returned. “Lieutenant,” he said, “DMV says the vehicle is registered to the Danish consulate general on Second Avenue in Manhattan. The principal driver is listed as one Edwin A. Paine of 442 Little West 12th Street, New York, New York.”

“Twelfth Street? What’s a Village fruitcake doing with an embassy car?” asked Byrne. “Call BCI and see if this boy rings a bell.” If Paine had ever been arrested, the Bureau of Criminal Identification would have his New York State Inquiry Identification System number. And if Paine had a NYSIIS number, the Photo Unit would have a picture of him on file.

Byrne peered into the empty auto and then climbed into the back seat. “Lemme have a look,” he said. He ran his hands between where the seats met the back rests, where folks usually stuffed their seat belts, and down the sides. Nada, not even an old pen. Byrne was fishing around in the side compartments of the BMW, just below the windows on the driver’s side, when he felt something.

“Uh, Lieutenant?” said Andersen, who was still standing there. “That address? It’s not Twelfth Street, it’s Little West 12th Street. They’re not the same street, sir.”

“Just a minute.” He didn’t need a lesson in the arcana of Greenwich Village geography at this moment. He could get that from his art-dealer girlfriend Doreen the next time he stayed over.

“Nobody lives on Little West 12th Street, is all,” persisted the patrolman. “It’s the meat-packing district. Where the sex clubs are now.”

The object was crumpled, but even before he looked at it he could tell by the paper’s thick texture that it was a photograph. Byrne climbed out of the car and into the sunlight, where he could get a good look.

“The slaughterhouse district,” insisted Andersen. “My dad used to work there.”

It was a black-and-white snapshot of two women, with their arms thrown casually around each other’s shoulders. They were both wearing smiles, sweaters and out-of-date hairdos, which were being tousled by the wind. One of them, the movie-star pretty lady on the left with the flashing eyes, he did not recognize, but the other, plainer one he certainly did. She was young, she was fresh, and she most definitely was his mother, Irene Byrne, of Woodside, Queens, New York. He put the picture in his pocket, as unobtrusively as possible, and hoped no one would notice.

“Body bag,” he said.

The original hardback cover

A Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection upon its publication in 1997, and the recipient of a starred review in Publishers Weekly, Exchange Alley (for reasons that will become clear as you read) has become something of a cult novel. In it, I introduced the character of Lt. Francis X. Byrne, the hot-tempered detective who catches a grisly murder case that, literally, changes his entire world. Frankie became so popular with readers that I brought him back last year (and promoted him to Captain) in Early Warning, where he battles against a spectacular terrorist attack on Times Square, and I suspect he’ll turn up again in another novel very soon.

I first got the idea of writing Exchange Alley during my various trips to the Soviet Union, beginning in 1986 (I was in country when Chernobyl blew up) and continuing right up to its dissolution in 1991. At the same time, I was deeply fascinated by the Kennedy Assassination, which I recalled vividly from my boyhood. So, as writers do, I thought: what if?

What if the KGB’s file on Lee Harvey Oswald, which has never been made public, was stolen by a rogue KGB agent operating under deep cover in the U.S. and made available to the highest bidder?

What if the interested parties included the Mafia, the CIA and the FBI?

What if Frankie’s brother, Tom, was an FBI agent and deeply involved with the case?

What if Frankie and Tom hate each other?

What if there’s a family secret that stretches all the way back to World War II and the Holocaust?

And what if the Russian agent — who goes by the name of Egil Ekdahl — is dead in the very first chapter, the victim of what at first appears to be an impossible crime?

Well, you can imagine the hilarity that ensues.

Publishers Weekly said:

The final 100 pages of this book offer a series of explosive surprises, from the identity of Ekdahl’s killer to the truth about Byrne’s own heritage. There isn’t much Walsh doesn’t know about the JFK assassination, and the background research for this virtuoso novel feels thorough. Weaving from the worst of the Russian prison camps to Manhattan’s elite European demimonde, from Brighton Beach’s vicious Russian mobs to Little Italy’s complacently murderous families, Walsh orchestrates a gripping tale of the horrors that were set in motion the day a president was murdered.

And that’s how Exchange Alley came about. I’ve published four more novels since, with another three under contract (continuing the “Devlin” series), but I’ll likely never write a book as technically complex and downright weird as this one.

So be warned: Exchange Alley is not for the squeamish. Violent, sexy and wildly politically incorrect, it probably wouldn’t even get published today. There’s something in it to offend and frighten just about everybody. But I love it the way a dad loves his first born, and I hope you will too.

Attention producers — this is the only one of my novels for which the movie rights are still available!

Excerpts tomorrow. Come prepared. You’ve been warned…

(Thank God religion had nothing to do with it.)

It turns out that all the explosives they purchased were fake – supplied by agents pretending to be Al-Qaeda militants. Chuck Schumer called the group “relatively unsophisticated,” which I guess should make us happy.

But it pisses me off. Frankly, I don`t give a flying imam how incompetent a terrorist is. I don`t care if they couldn`t tell the difference between a Stinger and a stapler, the fact is – it`s dangerous and stupid to make light of their ultimate goals, simply because they didn’t reach them.

Chuck Schumer wasn`t doing that – thankfully, even he stressed the need for vigilance. And I admit the typical, dismissive attitude toward the threat of terror hasn`t happened just yet.

But it`s only been a day. Give it time, folks. Liberal journalists, dumbass comedians and left wing blogs have done this before. Whether it`s the group who tried to bomb Fort Dix, the creeps who wanted to decimate the Sears Tower, or that charmless shoe bomber – because all these losers fail, that`s somehow proof we`re just exaggerating the threat of militant Islam.

Sorry folks – I`d prefer not to have one of these plots be successful, and have a mall blown up, in order to prove that the terror threat is real. Especially since I`m a huge fan of Cinnabons (although that strudel goes straight to my hips.)

TONIGHT: Jim Norton, Carl Cameron, Liz Clayman and Father Jonathan!