Текст книги "The Intercept"

Автор книги: Dick Wolf

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Chapter 4

Bassam Shah left his Ford Taurus in a mall parking garage, taking only his laptop bag from the backseat. Before leaving the car, he fished the detonators out of the air-conditioning vents, leaving them on the floor in front of the passenger seat. He left the car keys in the cupholder and the driver’s door unlocked before walking away.

The detonators were removed almost immediately, just minutes before an FBI surveillance car secured a spot within eyesight of the Taurus. The runner, who was unaware of the larger plan, quickly slipped into another vehicle two flights down and drove away.

Shah hurried through the shopping center, hopping a taxi that took him to a prearranged address. He entered the front door of the high-rise apartment building and immediately went to the basement below, utilizing an old tunnel known to drug dealers and illegal immigrants. It delivered him to a second building, where he exited at the rear and crossed backyards to a bus stop.

Gone were his laptop and one of his phones.

Shah entered the subway, riding for an hour. He sat in a corner seat, placidly but carefully watching riders get on and off.

He switched trains twice, watching for familiar faces, seeing none. Still, he could not relax. He tried to tell himself that this was normal. He boarded a 7 train, wearing ear buds whose plug end was tucked into his empty pocket. His jaw was trembling and there seemed to be nothing he could do to stop it. Anticipation and adrenaline had set his muscles to shaking. He wished he had a player into which he could plug the ear buds, only to counter the alarms going off inside his head.

He was finally able to soothe himself by focusing his thoughts on the task at hand. He imagined the subway car filling suddenly with a blast of orange flame. The shock wave tore the steel hull apart as it blasted through the underground tube, obliterating every human in its wake. His mind went further, well beyond the blast radius, into the fear that would ripple throughout the city and the country at large.

Paralysis would ensue. Then necrosis. Then death.

No one and no place is safe. Not in New York City, not anywhere.

That was the message.

Physical exhaustion caught up with him, coupled with the rocking of the subway car, lulling him to sleep. He awoke fighting, wild-eyed, when a Transit Authority driver shook him from his slumber. As the uniformed woman bustled off to call the authorities, Shah rushed out of the car and up an out-of-service escalator and quickly onto the street, chastened by his own inattention. Too much was at stake.

He walked the rest of the way to Times Square. The sunshine warmed him and he met no one’s eyes. The city planners had recently restricted traffic from the major intersection, setting up tables and chairs, in an effort to make the Crossroads of the World more of a plaza. Shah was looking for his family’s cart.

Until the 1970s, Greeks owned and operated most food cart franchises in New York City. The business had fractured throughout the 1980s into the 1990s. Most vendors still rented their carts from descendants of the old Greek owners, but now different nationalities specialized in certain products.

Fruit stands and downtown hot dog carts were manned by Bangladeshis. Dominicans ran the uptown hot dogs. Vietnamese ran smoothie carts citywide. Brazilians and Colombians operated the fragrant nut carts. And Afghans ran almost every coffee and pastry cart in town.

Shah’s father, a cabdriver, had purchased his cart in 1997, just before it became prohibitively expensive to do so. In May 2001, he left the family to attend a funeral in the Andarab district of Baghlan Province and never returned. The family’s search for him was initially confounded by the travel and information restrictions imposed after the 9/11 attacks, but he was never heard from again. His disappearance remained unsolved and festered like a wound in Bassam Shah’s mind.

Shah had, over the course of that decade, come to associate his father’s vanishing with the terror attacks. All this ruminating had led him to the certainty that his father had been somehow involved in the Holy War. He believed that his father was still alive and had been pulled into the resistance movements in the mountains, most likely crossing over into Pakistan.

At the training camp Shah had attended in Waziristan, his instructors hinted as much. Their discouragement of his desire to continue the search for his father served to confirm his thoughts. Cells must be kept separate for security reasons, and Shah pledged himself to the larger cause.

The coffee cart cleared thirty thousand dollars a year. Shah himself had operated the cart alone for much of the middle of the decade, his dependably friendly morning face for the arriving armies of financial district bankers and clerks masking the tumult inside. In those days, which seemed so long ago now, he had kept a stack of Korans in a box beneath the cart, and handed a copy to anybody who would take it. But when questions about his father’s fate took over his thinking, consuming his daily life, he realized he needed to leave the cart and seek his own path.

He moved to Denver for a year for religious observance in a mosque outside the city. Shah subleased the cart to a fellow Afghan, a cousin who was eager to work and who appeared content with his subsistence living, even happy—and essentially blind to the plight of his countrymen.

Shah returned to New York every few months to check on his cousin. His visits were always the same. Sell a few cups of coffee, greet the occasional old customer, and help his cousin tow the cart back to Greenpoint in Brooklyn for storage at the end of the day. But recently he had treated these visits as less than a courtesy call and more of a reconnaissance mission. Also, returning to the city recharged his resolve, erasing any doubts he had as to his duty.

He found Ahmed working beneath the cart’s faded umbrella just off Seventh Avenue, a strategic position equidistant from the many Starbucks around Times Square. Midafternoon was a slow period, when customers tended to be caffeine-craving tourists off their usual time clock or nearby office workers in need of a stimulant between meals. Shah plucked out his ear buds and greeted his cousin, who was excited to see him. He inquired about the business and made small talk, but not much more. He treated Ahmed coldly, which was not his intent, but Shah knew he was not himself. He saw that Ahmed noticed his lack of spirit, but Ahmed said nothing.

Under the pretense of examining the cart for possible repairs, Shah examined the area beneath the cart where he used to store his Korans. Ahmed’s Puma backpack was the only item there.

Ahmed brought up a problem he was having with the coffee distributor, and Shah nodded as though any of this mattered. An approaching man called his name—“Bassam!”—nearly sending Shah into a panic. But Shah saw that the old man was a former customer, recognizing his nicotine-gray face and the sneakers he wore with his suit like the female commuters.

The customer was effusive, wanting to know how he was, and Shah responded as though from the bottom of a murky pond. He was so many leagues away from any sort of common social interaction. And this man was a Jew, and Shah felt a sting of foolishness for allowing himself to befriend him so many years ago.

“Is anything wrong, are you all right?” asked the man. “You seem different.”

Shah shook his head or nodded, he did not even know which. No matter how he responded to the man, his mind was saying Go away.

And finally the man did, and Shah could tell Ahmed was looking at him warily. Shah told him they were packing up a little early that day. Together they pushed the cart two blocks through the square, then three blocks west to the parking lot on Forty-third Street. There they loaded the cart onto a rusty trailer hooked to a 1999 Toyota Camry and towed it back to the storage building in Greenpoint and locked up. Shah handed Ahmed his backpack and a wad of bills.

“Tomorrow is yours, cousin. Enjoy a day away. I would like a day’s work with the cart. Here is your day’s proceeds in advance.”

Ahmed leafed through the bills, less than one hundred dollars. He was more confused than grateful. To his credit, a day off meant nothing to him. He worked without complaint. But he was pleased to receive his pay. “Would you like me to help you in the morning, fill the dispensers—”

“No, I will do so myself.”

Ahmed wanted to insist. Routine was everything to him, and he seemed almost offended by Shah’s generosity. But eventually he took his backpack and, with a warm but uncertain nod, started for home.

Chapter 5

Fisk was at his desk later in the day when an attractive young woman tapped the top of his monitor. She had short, dyed black hair that looked like she had trimmed it herself: a note of harshness in contrast to the soft features of her face. Still, he bought the screw-you, punk look. It must have served her well, passing as a hardcase radical in neighborhoods where it looked good to be Caucasian and pissed off at the United States. She had spent the past seven months talking revolution and seeding dissent in order to draw out others eager to make such talk a reality.

“Krina Gersten,” she said, introducing herself. “I was told you asked to see me?”

Fisk nodded, thrown off by what looked to him like a hickey on the side of her neck, just above the collar of her military-style jacket. He felt his eyes flash to it, and then, rather than pull back guiltily like a kid caught staring at cleavage, he squinted, getting a closer look.

“Snakebite?” he said.

She smiled, touching it gently, like a burn. She had a fine neck, which was why the mark stood out so vividly. And her smile showed a tiny space between her two front teeth, giving her face a little extra character and attitude. “You’re the first person rude enough to comment on it.”

“I make an incredible first impression,” said Fisk. “You see, the trick is to suck out the venom without swallowing it and becoming poisoned yourself.”

“You’ve had experience with this?” she said.

“With snake venom?” he said. “Just ask my ex.”

Gersten smiled at that—not amused, necessarily, or even impressed, but rather appreciative of the banter. Intrigued. Fisk could see that, to her, flirtation was less an invitation than a challenge. “ ‘Ex’ as in ex-wife?”

“Ex-fiancée,” said Fisk. “She was a snake charmer.”

“Right,” said Gersten. “Sounds like a fun gal.”

Fisk held out his hand. “Jeremy Fisk.”

Gersten made a point of giving him a good, firm, professional squeeze.

“Easy there,” he said, pulling back his sore hand. “Death grip. Dad in the military?”

“Not the military,” she said.

“Uh-oh,” said Fisk, knowing what was coming next.

“That’s right,” she told him. “A cop.”

“Christ. Second or third generation?”

“Me? I’m the fourth.”

“Gah. Okay. Thanks very much for the warning.”

“You have no idea,” she said. “What about you, Detective Fisk? What’s your story?”

“Me? Just your run-of-the-mill first-generation public servant.”

“Yeah? So where’d you draw the cop gene from?”

“Mutation,” he said. “A defect.”

“Okay,” she said, sizing him up, deciding. “You’re interesting.”

Fisk liked her immediately. Later he would learn that her father had been a sergeant in charge of one of the department’s scuba squads when he suffered a heart attack underwater. Gersten had been thirteen at the time. She still lived with her mother across the Narrows over on Staten Island, which was like a ghetto for New York cops and firefighters. She had also done a tour in Iraq with a national police transition team, following college at CUNY. So for her the cop life had been the one and only course on her life menu.

The big dance was bad business with another cop, but immediately they had that undercurrent of attraction that kept things fun and interesting. Gersten came recommended to him from street raking for her skills, her work ethic, and the fact that she took shit assignments without complaint and wound up excelling at them.

“Did I see you limping?” she asked.

“You might have. Basketball.”

“Hurts getting old, huh?” she said.

He smiled at her insolence. “Maybe you can make heads or tails of this. I had this dream last night. I was at a cocktail party at the police academy, which also resembled my high school. Anyway, I watched as the bartender planted a bomb beneath the bar. I saw all this from across the crowded room . . . but I couldn’t get to him, all because of this limp.”

“Was he Middle Eastern?” she interjected.

“Of course he was,” said Fisk. “You make pizzas all day, you dream of pizzas. You work mosques and shawarma shops all day, you dream of Middle Easterners.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So finally I get near the bar—I’m the only one who can hear this thing ticking—and I go around the end and dive underneath . . . and there’s nothing there. Just the tanks for the soda taps. I look up—and now the room is in flames all around me. Drapes on fire, walls melting—but people still socializing and chatting.”

“Good booze,” she surmised. “Open bar, I take it?”

“I was hoping for a little more insight than that, Doctor.”

Gersten said, “In my dreams now, I am always aware that I’m dreaming. Never used to be that way before I switched over to Intel. Now I’m always conscious that it’s not really real. That I have to be in control, even in my sleep. Takes all the fun out of it, don’t you think?”

“Ever vigilant,” said Fisk. “The nature of the job.”

“The nature of the beast. Not fair, though. I can’t even get away from this stuff in my downtime?”

“No such thing as downtime,” said Fisk. “Remember, you’re not paranoid, you’re alert. I go to movies now, I can’t stop thinking about all the people in the dark around me—who are they, what are they doing.”

She nodded. “They’re enjoying the movie.”

“The way it’s supposed to be. That’s our job. Allowing them to do so.” He sighed. “I used to like movies.”

“And I used to like sleep,” said Gersten.

They caught themselves bitching. Fisk said, “Okay, now that we’ve had our cry . . .”

He brought her up to date on the Shah situation. Just the highlights, for the time being.

“You know the imam who runs the funeral home in Flushing?”

Gersten nodded. “Samara Abad Salame.”

“The FBI’s had him in their pocket for a while. Got into a bit of trouble last year with his taxes. Not enough to get him hauled in, but just enough to soften him up for a visit.”

Gersten got it. “They went salivating,” she guessed.

“Exactly. Now, Salame has given them the goods so far. And they’ve made him available to us, and he’s been on target, so much as we know. But his loyalty is ultimately neither to the FBI nor to us. So I don’t think it’s too much of a leap to consider the fact that he might not be telling the FBI everything. Now, Analytic got me lineage charts on a guy currently in Gitmo who is apparently Salame’s brother, though maybe by a different mother.”

Gersten said, “Family concerns trump all.”

“Exactly. And Shah is also a cousin of his.”

Gersten said, “Let me ask you this. Do you think Shah was baited in Denver?”

“You mean, was he encouraged or otherwise coerced to act? Probably.” Fisk waved it away. “I can’t care. That’s the FBI’s problem. This is our job here. Actual lives are at stake. No matter what brought him to this point, there is absolutely no question he is planning and preparing a terrorist act. He’s a dictionary-definition terrorist.”

“Sounds to me like I’m getting off the street,” said Gersten.

“For now,” said Fisk. “See, they—the FBI—they wanted to let this guy run some more, see who he meets here in New York, gather up more intelligence crumbs.”

“You think it’s not worth it.”

“Nope. Not since Shah shook free of surveillance three hours ago.”

Gersten’s mouth hung open. “Holy shit.”

“We’ve got people who knew his family. I’ve got a bead, not on where he is, but where he might go. The FBI might have this information too.”

“Good,” she said. Then, reading his face, she reconsidered. “No?”

“This is Intel’s turf now. I need someone like yourself. Someone who doesn’t look cop. Somebody who can dupe not only a terrorist, but perhaps the FBI as well. What I need to know right now is, will that be a problem for you?”

Of all the answers he could have received, Fisk did not expect her to smile. She said, “Now things are getting interesting.”

“Peavy?” said Fisk. “Where are you?”

“The studio.” Peavy was a military sharpshooter, a veteran of four tours of duty over the past decade with eighty-five confirmed kills to his credit. He taught at a Krav Maga studio on the Lower East Side. “I’m in.”

Fisk said, “You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“It’s either a job or tickets to the Yankees.”

“The Yankees are out of town,” said Fisk.

“This official or not?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On how it comes out.”

Peavy said, “Let’s not do this over the phone.”

Chapter 6

At eight o’clock the next morning, Shah entered the unlocked door of a house in Flushing, a residential neighborhood of single-family homes. Majid Kazir arrived less than ten minutes later, looking dazed and dark-eyed from having stayed up all night. He pulled a can of Diet Coke from the refrigerator and sat down at the table, plucked open the soda can tab with a long thumbnail, and drank as though to wash away a bad taste in his mouth. He badly needed the caffeine.

Kazir smelled of bleach. “Mother is finished,” he said.

This was Kazir’s mother’s house, but Kazir was not referring to her. The beauty salon attached to the structure belonged to his mother, was staffed by his two sisters, and was managed by Kazir. Kazir’s hair was kinky but flat. He had no use for beauty products himself, but the shop did a steady business and his mother and sisters were always pleased.

The shop had been closed for four days. Their trip to visit relatives in Pennsylvania had been arranged by Kazir to take place this week. He needed the house to himself.

As the manager, one of his responsibilities was to procure supplies used in the treatments. He had been patiently amassing a modest stockpile of hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and acid from various beauty supply stores over the past eight months. The three ingredients in acetone peroxide, or triacetone triperoxide, could form a primary high explosive. The compound’s notorious sensitivity to impact, heat, and friction earned it a nickname among the Islamist underground organizations.

Mother of Satan.

Shah said, “Mother is packed and ready?”

Kazir nodded, suppressing a carbonation belch. He looked at his still-trembling hand. Kazir had been heating and mixing the ingredients all night. “Mother was a bitch tonight, my friend.”

Kazir finished his soda and tossed the empty can into the sink. Shah had been put in contact with him through the network. Kazir did not come to him espousing jihad and anti-American sentiments—which was good, since those are all hallmarks of a law enforcement plant. Kazir was serious, and he was quiet. His only hot point of anger was the place of women in American society. He detested their independence, which he claimed was the reason he had so much trouble finding a wife. Indeed, his own mother and sisters venerated him as the man of the household, so much so that he was required to contribute very little to the family business. Even this, he resented.

He believed that he was meant for bigger and better things. This was his first stride toward greatness, following in the footsteps of his Moroccan countrymen, who had orchestrated the Madrid commuter train bombings. Outwardly, he appeared to pay Shah’s bid for martyrdom much respect, but Shah suspected that Kazir would never exhibit the same level of commitment as Shah—that is to say, the ultimate commitment. In this endeavor, Kazir had taken great care that his participation not be discovered.

Kazir had been trained as a chemist in the same camp Shah had attended, in the high mountains of Waziristan on the Pakistan and Afghanistan border. Shah had confidence that the explosive would not fail him—nor he it.

Shah pulled the cell phone from his pocket. “Here.” He placed it on the table before Kazir, who regarded it as one might regard a cockroach.

“What is this?”

“A telephone,” said Shah. “It contains my statement. My video. You will upload it precisely at eleven A.M.”

Kazir looked at the flip phone. “You videoed it yourself?”

“Of course.” It was an older device with the chipset of a pay-as-you-go convenience store phone. He had used its low-res camera to record his final words while locked in the bathroom stall of a Middle Eastern restaurant on Twenty-eighth Street. His other phone, his public phone, he had “lost” along with his laptop. Those devices could not be trusted.

“Dispose of this when you are done,” said Shah.

“I do not like handling electronic devices,” said Kazir.

High-impact explosives, yes. But smartphones, no. Shah shook his head. This man refined hydrogen peroxide and acetone into explosive crystals as powerful as C-4. But he was paranoid about handling a microprocessor. Shah was not unhappy to leave this world.

“I have been very careful, I assure you,” said Shah. “Where is it?”

Kazir nodded to the back entrance. Shah rose and found a gym bag there, a small duffel. He lifted it, tentatively at first. It was heavy, but not prohibitively so.

He thought to say something more to Kazir, who remained slumped in a chair in the kitchen. But there were no words.

In the end, he tucked the pack beneath his arm and simply headed out the door. His farewell would be one not of words but of deed.