BioKill (7 page)

“On what charge?”

“Not complying with a request when asked.”

The NYPD officer handcuffed the protesting cleric, before marching him barefoot down the stairs. The two men outside had no alternative but to watch as their religious leader was bundled into the back of the waiting van and driven off for questioning.

Chapter Nine

The Ford Transit
van entered the basement car park with the suspect in custody. The cleric, barefoot and hands handcuffed behind his back, was guided to a lift. Accompanied by Lilburn and Gibbons, he was taken to the eleventh floor, where he was left alone in an interrogation room.

Lilburn and Gibbons stared at their captive from behind the one-way glass in the adjoining room.

“You know,’ said Gibbons, “we haven’t read him his rights yet or done a formal process.”

“I know and for the time being that suits me fine. I want to see what he has to say first. The last thing we need is for him to get some smartass lawyer holding things up.”

“You haven’t told me why Homeland wants to question him?”

“No, I haven’t. Afraid it will have to stay that way, at least for a while. How long can you hold him?”

“Twenty-four hours. But unless Homeland will be taking the rap for unconstitutional arrest, I don’t know how my bosses will feel if Fawaz starts demanding a lawyer.”

“Give me ten minutes with him. If I can’t get anything I want out of him in that time, I doubt if I’ll get anything later. While I’m in there with him, I would appreciate it if no one was in this room or any recordings taken.”

Gibbons looked at Lilburn. “I can do that, but it must be for something really important for you guys to be interested in him. Homeland Security, Muslims… why don’t you arrest him under an enemy combatant status, then you could hold him indefinitely?”

Lilburn could see the direction the inspector was heading and he had to admit Gibbons was putting one and one together rather well.

“Ten minutes.” Lilburn opened the door of the observation room to the foyer and waited for Gibbons to follow before he shut the door behind him. Taking a deep breath, he turned the handle and entered the interrogation room.

The room was compact and practically empty, with just a desk and three chairs — designed to take anyone unfortunate enough to be interviewed out of their comfort zone. The chair was intentionally uncomfortable and the large one-way mirror, not only a tool for observers, was intended to raise the suspect’s anxiety.

Abdul Baari Fawaz wasn’t one to be coerced by a room; nor for that matter, by a mere interrogator. Lilburn didn’t rate his chances, as he sat in a more comfortable chair on the other side of the table.

Lilburn sat silent and stared at the cleric, who stared back. After a few moments Lilburn asked Fawaz if he would like his handcuffs removed; there was no response.

“I’ll decide for you, then.” Lilburn rose from the chair, opened the door and called an officer to remove the cuffs. With the handcuffs removed and the officer gone, Lilburn sat down again. More silence.

“You are a cleric in your mosque, right? The Imam, the person who leads prayers.” Lilburn hadn’t yet managed to get a response. “I’ve seen death, up close, Imam Fawaz, real death, the hard cold facts of life. Have you ever seen a mother carrying her dead child in her arms? Doesn’t matter if she cries out to God or Allah — they all cry for the same help, don’t they? You ever seen a soldier with his guts hanging out clawing the ground in agony screaming for help… same Creator, same God, same Allah. Don’t we have enough destruction already on this earth, Imam Fawaz?”

Fawaz shifted slightly in his hard chair. He hadn’t taken his eyes off his interrogator throughout the one-way conversation. He rubbed his wrists where the steel handcuffs had pressed against his flesh. Lilburn saw the movement; he hoped Fawaz would in some way connect with what he said and see the man before him as someone he could relate to, someone to trust, perhaps a kindred spirit. It was interrogating 101.

“You have a choice, an individual choice to stop this right now… if you want to. Do you want to make that choice, Imam?” As he spoke, Lilburn studied the man in front of him. The dark eyes and stony unrelenting glare revealed a man whose faith would never waiver; it would remain unchanged until his dying day. Neither Matt Lilburn, nor anyone else, would be able to even chip the outer layer.

He was fast running out of time and needed to take another tack. “You know why you were brought in here. We’ve uncovered your little scheme and once this is over, you’ll be put away for a very long time.” Lilburn stood up. As far as he was concerned there was no more to be gained. “And just in case you think I’m bluffing, I’ll leave you with one word.”

Despite himself, the Imam looked up at Lilburn.

“Syria.”

Lilburn left the room, but not before watching the beginning of a smile appear briefly on the Imam’s face.

Gibbons was waiting outside the interrogation room.

“Did you get what you were after?”

“Nothing, as I expected. Fawaz didn’t utter a word. Keep him as long as you can, then I’ll need you to put surveillance on him when he’s released and have his phones tapped.”

“We need the necessary authority to tap the phones… and I still don’t know what information we’re looking for.”

“I’ll see you have the authority. Look for anything to do with a breach in national security. You’ll know if you come across it. What I can say is anything to do with Syria will start alarm bells ringing.”

The phone operator at Homeland Security transferred Lilburn’s call through to Director Hall.

“How did you go?”

“No luck, sir. We pulled in the cleric but he won’t answer any questions and certainly hasn’t volunteered anything.”

Unsurprised, Director Hall gave Lilburn instructions to stay in New York and return in the morning. “Nothing for you to do up here. Dr. Crawston is working out a strategy in conjunction with the Disease Control Center on how to deal with an outbreak, if and when it occurs. I’ve sent out a heads-up nationwide to all enforcement agencies and postal services to report any activity to do with Syria. Best guess at the moment is the virus arrives in the post, possibly New York but that’s not certain by a long shot. Be back here tomorrow morning.” There was a click on Lilburn’s mobile as Hall bluntly ended the call.

*

“All right, all right, you rabble, settle down, it ain’t over until I say so. The lieutenant wants to say something. Boss.”

“Thank you, sergeant. This has come in from Homeland Security — while you’re out on the street, be specially diligent about any reference to Syria. Mail from the place, anything like that. And for you bozos who don’t already know it, Syria is a country.

An officer not known for his wits spoke up. “Which state, sir?”

“Button it, pinhead,” the sergeant broke in. “You don’t know where Syria is, go look up a map.”

“Thank you, sergeant, anyone else here want to interrupt me? No? Now Homeland has sent this out as a top priority. You all know as well as me when Homeland starts sending us stuff,” the lieutenant waved around a piece of paper in the air, “we know something is serious. Now for your information, yesterday a squad picked up a Muslim preacher from our precinct and took him back to have a word with him. One of the Homeland boys from Albany tagged along. I don’t know much more than that but let me say it again, anything at all regarding Syria then let me or the sergeant know. Just don’t forget what happened with the Twin Towers. No questions? Then carry on.”

Rookie officer Martinez couldn’t believe his luck. Something Homeland Security was interested in was going down in the streets he worked. The lieutenant mentioned Syria, something registered about that name.
Something…
“Officer Maitland?” Maitland, the briefing over, had stood up and was about to leave the room when the rookie spoke. “The other day, remember? The apartment.”

“What friggin’apartment are you talking about? There’s thousands of the damn things.”

“Remember the old lady who said the two men next door were making a bomb?”

Maitland took a moment to recall the incident. “Yeah, so what? We searched the place, spoke to some raghead, nothing, except…” Maitland hesitated. The stamp, the stamp on the wrapping paper was the same one his nephew had shown him in his stamp album. “Where did that guy say he came from?”

“Syria, I remember it was Syria.”

Maitland sat back down. “The lieutenant, he said something to look out for, what the fuck was it?”

“I took notes, he said to look out especially for anything to do with Syria.”

“I know that, what was the other thing?”

Martinez brushed though his notes. “The lieutenant mentioned to be diligent about anyone from Syria and any mail we might see.”

“You know what, kid? You might just do OK. Come with me.”

Martinez followed Maitland to the lectern at the front of the room.

“Hey, Sarge.”

The roll call sergeant was putting his notes back together when Officer Maitland approached him. “Don’t ask me for leave, Maitland, we’re short staffed as it is.”

“We might have something for you regarding the Syrian thing…”

“Keep talking.”

“The rookie and me got called out to attend a domestic. When was it, kid, yesterday? Yeah, yesterday. Turned out it was just two guys probably pissing off the old lady next door by praying all the damn time.”

“Congratulations, you want a medal or something?”

“The guy we interviewed said he was Syrian. And he had an empty parcel wrapper…”

The sergeant looked up. “Follow me. You too, Martinez.”

The lieutenant looked up from his office desk at the sound of the single knock; his sergeant leaned forward, one hand on the door jamb, the other on the handle of the half-opened door.

“Lieutenant, you might want to hear this.”

Chapter Ten

Five times a
day their religion required them to face holy Mecca and prostrate themselves. Twice already they had ritually cleansed themselves and carried out their obligations. The second time was within a much shorter interval than usual, as they would soon be traveling and prayers would only be taken when the opportunity allowed. Yusuf and Bashir locked their apartment door for what could be the last time. They saw their first few steps down the corridor as the first steps to martyrdom. Both men felt the weight of responsibility that had been placed on their shoulders. There was no choice but to succeed in the mission to help bring down
those of another book,
the infidels of America. Nothing the men had ever done had felt so satisfying. Millions of future followers would one day recount their names with great reverence.

The door to apartment twenty-seven shut quietly, the lock turned and a security chain rattled as the old woman’s wrinkled black hands fumbled to secure her door from the inside. Taking a piece of paper from a drawer she scribbled down what she had just seen.
The two Arab men left the apartment at ten past ten, wearing jeans, one with a black hoodie with I love Montana written on the front. Other one had a white T-shirt with Patriots for Patriots. Both carrying a blue duffel bag with white straps. They yabbered twice this morning, first time woke me just after five a.m.
The old lady had been making notes about her neighbors long before she had phoned the police the day before. The piece of paper along with the pen was carefully placed back in the desk drawer. The men kept on annoying her with their continual praying —
damn caterwaulin’ don’t sound like no prayers to me.
Looking at her phone on top of the table she picked up the receiver to call the police. Yesterday she had memorized the older policeman’s number and written it down
.
She thought about phoning and asking for him to come on out again.
Fancy them Arabs
wearing a shirt that said Patriots for Patriots. That’s un-American, them wearing that shirt. Police should do something about it
, she thought to herself. The old lady started dialing nine-one-one but the pain in her arthritic fingers bit hard, making her hands tremble.
Dang — but that smarts some!
I’ll wait until tomorrow, I’ve got my shopping to do today.

Yusuf al-Nasseri and Bashir Zuabi walked out of the apartment block to the sidewalk. Blending in with other pedestrians in the ethnically diverse neighborhood, the two silently, casually made their way to the nearest bus stop. There they caught the next available commuter bus via the Manhattan Bridge to 625 Eight Avenue, midtown Manhattan and the Port Authority Bus Terminal located in Times Square, just over five kilometers from One Police Plaza.

The nation’s largest bus terminal sat amidst commercial neighbors, the likes of the
New York Times
building, Madame Tussaud’s and Ripley’s Believe It or Not, mothership to a swarm of state and interstate passengers, with over two hundred thousand people passing through each day.

The two bioterrorists arrived outside, unnoticed in all the hustle and bustle. Exiting the city bus onto the busy sidewalk, the men made their way inside, where the semi-organized street traffic gave way to organized chaos. Duffel bags slung over their shoulders, tightly gripping the straps, they negotiated the throng of commuters, swerving in and out of the rumbustious flow. Every so often an unwitting person would bump into them, some knocking the bags the men carried. On not a single person’s mind was the notion that, within their midst, two young men were on their way to unleash an economic catastrophe to rival the loss of the Twin Towers. And it would be done so easily, so cheaply. The poor man’s nuke was in transit.

Yusuf glanced down at his watch — ten forty-five in the morning. The last bus upstate to Binghamton had left at ten; the next was due to depart at eleven-thirty from the lower level of the North Terminal.

Music played over loudspeakers, every so often interrupted with messages about security and not leaving luggage or parcels unattended otherwise there was the probability of search by the Port Authority Police. Neither Yusuf nor Bashir had any intention of letting go of their bags. Retrieving his credit card from the automated ticketing machine, Yusuf placed it safely in his pocket.

Bashir carried out the same procedure. “C’mon, we’ve got plenty of time before we pick up our ride. Let’s go for a coffee and use the restroom, it’ll probably be a long trip.”

“You’re as bad as my mother!” Yusuf grinned. “Hey, I’m getting more excited every minute! Look at all these people around us — the morons have no idea what we’re about to do!”

His friend nodded. “Yeah, I’m the same. Can you feel the presence of Allah walking with us? It’s like he’s guiding our every move — and we’re totally invisible to our enemies. It’s like he’s put a protective shield around us.”

His friend nodded. “We mustn’t lose our concentration; we have to stick to the plan. Timing is critical. As soon as we reach our destination, we’ll have to find our first victims straight away.”

The bag straps never left their shoulders as they sipped their hot coffee and later relieved themselves in a restroom. At eleven twenty-five the last of the passengers boarded the Greyhound bus to Binghamton.