Dead on Arrival (30 page)

The first thing Mahoney did was let everyone know that the so-called Broderick Act wasn’t going to get voted on in the House that day. This caused the expected uproar, which he ignored, and then he left the Capitol while his brethren were calling their contacts in the media.

His driver dropped him off at the Justice Department. He could have requested the attorney general and the director of the FBI to come to his office, and most likely they would have. But he liked it better this way, because after he met with the two men he was holding a press conference – he’d already given his contacts in the media the time – and he liked the idea of posing in front of the attorney general’s building.

Attorney General Simon Wall and FBI Director Kevin Collier both shook the speaker’s hand when he entered Wall’s office, but neither was particularly effusive in their greeting. They knew Mahoney was being lambasted in the press and that his approval ratings had slipped when he refused to support Broderick’s bill. Wall and Collier, in other words, didn’t feel that they had to be nice to a man who might not be the speaker much longer.

Simon Wall was a lawyer, a political appointee, and close friends with both the president and the chairman of the Democratic Party. He had a seal’s head: wet-looking, slicked-back dark hair and warm, liquid brown eyes magnified by the lenses of his glasses. He looked harmless – but he wasn’t. FBI Director Kevin Collier, the man who looked like Mahoney’s old Boston terrier, was Simon Wall’s puppet.

Mahoney didn’t like either man.

Wall and Collier took seats at a small round table, and Mahoney settled into the third chair and began to speak. ‘Yesterday the DEA arrested a meth dealer in Winchester, Virginia, who is also the head of a white supremacist group. The guy who hijacked the New York shuttle, the cabdriver who tried to blow up the Capitol, and the son of my friend who tried to fly his plane into the White House were all coerced by this drug dealer’s people. In other words, these recent acts of terrorism, which the FBI has pinned on al-Qaeda and three Muslim Americans, were really the work of a bunch of white-power nuts. In other words,’ Mahoney repeated, ‘you two guys, who jumped with all four feet on Bill Broderick’s band wagon, are gonna look like a couple of idiots.’

Wall opened his mouth to say something, but Mahoney continued. ‘Now I’m gonna tell you what really happened.’ And he did. He told them what Jubal Pugh had admitted to DeMarco. When he finished he said, ‘What you’re gonna do is this. The FBI’s gonna take charge of this shithead that the DEA’s arrested, and you’re gonna offer him immunity from prosecution provided he can give you all the people who were involved in this thing. I’ve already told the guy you’re gonna do this.’

‘What?’ Wall said. ‘You don’t have the authority to—’

Mahoney rose to his feet. ‘I gotta take a piss – if it’s okay with you, Simon, I’ll use the can here in your office – but in ten minutes I’m holding a press conference right in front of this building. I’m gonna explain to the media how we were about to pass a horrible goddamn law because of terrorist attacks that were really orchestrated by these racist peckerheads and not by good Muslim American citizens, but, thank God, the diligent agents of the DEA
and
the FBI have uncovered the truth. This means you guys have about half an hour to figure out a way to put a spin on this that makes you look less stupid than you really are. Now, Simon, where’s your shitter?’

A platoon of lawyers and FBI agents invaded Winchester, Virginia, and took charge of Jubal Pugh, his people, and all the evidence the DEA had gathered. Jubal’s gang was placed in a federal lockup in Washington, D.C. Jubal himself was placed in a cell at Quantico and protected around the clock by the FBI.

The day after Pugh was taken to Quantico, Patsy Hall walked into DeMarco’s office in the Capitol. How she’d located his office, he didn’t know. She threw open the door, and it banged off the wall so hard he was surprised the frosted glass didn’t shatter. DeMarco took one look at her – all hundred and ten pounds of her trembling with rage, eyes blazing so hot they could have started a forest fire – and he was glad they hadn’t allowed her into the building with a weapon.

‘You son of a bitch!’ she screamed. ‘I spent five years trying to nail that bastard, and you’re letting him go. Letting him go!’

‘I’m sorry, Patsy, but it’s for … for the greater good.’

‘Yeah, well you can kiss my ass for the greater good.’ She paused a moment and added, ‘You used me, you prick.’

With that she turned and left, leaving DeMarco feeling like hell.

* * *

The press ripped the late William Broderick asunder and praised Mahoney to the skies.

Those politicians who had resisted Broderick’s efforts stretched their arms and patted themselves publicly on the back for their fortitude. Those who had sided with Broderick blamed the FBI for getting the facts all wrong. Hearings would be held, they promised.

The House voted on the Broderick Act –
everybody
was happy to call it by that name now – and the bill was defeated by ninety-five votes.

Mahoney was a happy man.

Surprisingly, so was Nick Fine.

The governor of Virginia, who couldn’t run again because of term limits, appointed Fine to fill Broderick’s seat until a special election could be held. The governor acted quickly and without consulting a number of people he should have consulted. The governor extolled Fine’s virtues, spoke of his experi ence, and implied that having
two
African Americans in the U.S. Senate wasn’t exactly stacking the deck. He said that if Fine had been in charge, Bill Broderick’s vile proposal would never have seen the light of day.

Miranda Bloom, DeMarco’s lobbyist friend, told him later that someone, name unknown, had made a substantial contribution to the University of Virginia. The donation came with a caveat: it was expected that the university would offer the governor of Virginia a position on its staff, the university being close to the governor’s home and a place where he had stated numerous times that he’d like to teach when his days of government service were over.

And then it all fell apart.

The day before he planned to have the boy install the devices, the workers at the refinery went on strike.

He blamed himself for not having known that a strike was pending, but as the facility was more than a hundred miles from Cleveland, the local papers hadn’t discussed the likelihood of a strike, nor was the plant of such significance that an imminent strike had made the national news.

These accursed people. Their greed was without limit. Even the lowest-paid workers at the refinery, the guards and the people who mopped the floors, lived better than people he had seen in Africa and Afghanistan and Palestine. They owned cars, often two or three. They lived with families of four in homes where a dozen people could have dwelt. They squandered their money on alcohol and pornographic DVDs – and they wanted more, always more.

The papers didn’t say how long the strike would last. On one hand, a stoppage could work to his advantage. If the facility wasn’t operating, security would be even more lax. And for all he knew, the security force was also on strike and had been replaced by temporary guards even less qualified than the existing ones. The problem was that if the refinery wasn’t operating, he didn’t know if there would be enough hydrofluoric acid in the tanks to cause the calamity he desired. He was not going to waste all the work he and the boy had done by blowing up empty tanks.

An Internet article he had read said there was talk of bringing in nonunion workers to replace those on strike, but it was uncertain if that would happen or when. Another article he read said that before going on strike the workers had conducted illegal slowdowns,
sick-outs
, they called them, and he didn’t know what that meant in terms of chemical quantities on hand. No, he didn’t like all the new variables caused by the strike. If they brought in different guards, they might follow different security procedures. And if they brought in replacement workers, the refinery most likely wouldn’t operate at maximum capacity, which could mean less of the chemical would be released. He just didn’t know.

It was God’s will. He would have to wait until the strike was over or find a different target.

After all, what did it matter if he had to wait a month or two? It had taken more than four years of planning to fly the planes into the Towers. And there was another reason why waiting could be good. He didn’t understand what had happened with this senator and his bill. It had appeared that the bill was going to pass in the American parliament or whatever they called it, when suddenly this senator was killed and the next thing he read was that the terrorist attacks were really caused by some madman, some drug dealer, and not by true believers. Now they were saying the law was
not
going to pass and, if anything, the government was now apologizing to Muslims for what it had been about to do to them.

So maybe waiting was good from that perspective as well. Let things return to normal, and then, when the tanks were destroyed – when thousands of people were killed, when dead schoolchildren were seen lying on the ground, when the wounded were shown blind and horribly burned – then the furor would begin all over again. And this time the whites would
demand
that this dead senator’s law be passed and there would be no doubt who was responsible for the attack.

The real problem with waiting was the boy’s mother. In the first few months after her husband’s death she had been almost catatonic, and when he’d first met the boy, she was still in that state. But in the last week or so, she had started to come out of it and was beginning to take an interest in her son’s life again. She knew the boy had stopped going to school, and when she first found out about this she hadn’t said too much. But now she was beginning to nag the boy about his education.

He had told the boy to tell his mother that he had a job, a job at a factory where he sometimes had to work nights. Where the mother came from, it was not unusual for boys her son’s age to have jobs, and she was so isolated from others of her kind and so ignorant of American norms that she accepted the explanation. To reinforce the lie, he gave the boy a small amount of money to take home each week to his mother as proof that he was working. But now she was asking questions. Where was this factory? What did he do? Did he have a future working there? And who was the man who called so often?

Again, had this not been America, had this been anywhere else in the civilized world, the boy, as man of the house, would have told the woman to mind her own business. But this was America. The woman thought she had the right to meddle in the affairs of men, particularly her son’s affairs.

The best thing would be if the mother were to die, but in some way that would increase the son’s bitterness toward his own people.

He would have to give that some thought.

Unlike with the two men who had tried to blow up the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, Myron Clark didn’t have to sleep-deprive Jubal Pugh to get him to talk. He didn’t have to bring in his glowering six-foot-four partner to intimidate him either. All he had to do was turn on his tape recorder. Pugh knew the only way he was going to stay out of jail was if he told Myron Clark everything he knew.

In response to Clark’s first question – How did he become involved in the terrorist attacks? – Jubal shrugged and said, ‘Got a letter in the mail.’ He said this like the letter had been a coupon flyer from a pizza place. ‘The letter said I’d make two million bucks if I was willing to do a few things to support a patriotic cause.
And
there was five grand in cash in the envelope, just for meeting the guy who sent the letter. That got my attention.’

‘And where’d you meet this
other
patriot at?’ Clark asked.

‘At a restaurant in Winchester,’ Jubal said. ‘The Waffle Shop. Guy called himself Mr Jones. Sounded like a highfalutin’ bastard.’

Clark guessed that meant the man didn’t have the dulcet tones of one raised in an Appalachian hamlet.

‘Anyway,’ Jubal said, ‘the first thing he did was name the guy who supplies my ephedrine.’

‘What?’ Clark said.

Pugh explained. The man who supplied the ephedrine that Pugh used to make his meth was the head of a Mexican drug cartel and lived in Mexico City. Mr Jones told Pugh that he’d done some work for the cartel and if Pugh wanted to check on his background, all he had to do was call his supplier and ask him about a man named James Flint and the job in Guadalajara. He said the Mexican was expecting Pugh’s call.

‘But I also figured Jones was sending me a message,’ Pugh said. ‘He was telling me he could fuck up my meth operation any time he wanted.’

‘Are you trying to say Jones
forced
you into helping him?’ Clark said.

‘Nah, I guess not. I’m just saying he had some leverage on me.’

‘And did you contact this Mexican?’ Clark asked.

‘Yeah. He knew Jones, or James Flint, or whatever his name is, and he said the man was someone I could trust.’

‘So you became partners with a man you’d never met based on the word of a drug lord.’

‘No, I became his partner ’cause he was payin’ me two million bucks. And I did try to find out who Jones really was,’ Pugh added. ‘I had Randy take his picture. Randy was up at the counter, drinkin’ coffee, and while I was talkin’ to Jones, Randy snapped off a shot with my Kodak.’

Clark didn’t bother to tell Pugh that the picture wasn’t worth a damn.

‘And later Randy tried to follow the guy,’ Pugh said, ‘but he was too slick for that.’

Clark refrained from commenting on the slickness quotient of Jubal or his boy Randy.

‘So then what?’ Clark said.

‘Well, then he told me what he wanted me to do,’ Jubal said.

Pugh said Jones gave him a broad outline of the plan and said he’d pay Pugh in installments following each successful phase. Pugh said he was impressed with Jones’s thoroughness and negotiated for another half a million.

‘I mean, I knew the shit was just gonna
fly
if I did what this fella wanted, and I figured another half million was only fair, considering I was taking all the risks.’

‘Yeah, sounds like you were a real bargain,’ Clark said. This guy Pugh, with his ferret’s nose and his tiny eyes and his unshaven chin, was just repulsive.

Pugh said that after he agreed to work with Jones, they left the restaurant together. In the restaurant parking lot, Jones gave Pugh a laptop, a schedule specifying when he was to turn the laptop on, and told him to hide the laptop someplace where it wouldn’t be found in the event that some law enforcement agency – like the DEA – obtained a warrant to search his house.

Pugh gave a little sniff. ‘Like I was an idiot or something,’ he said. ‘And then you know what the bastard said to me next?’

Clark just shook his head.

‘He said it was a damn good thing I agreed to do the job, because there was a rifle pointed at me, and if he took off his cap I’d have a third eye in my head. That actually kinda pissed me off.’

Pugh told Clark that after that one meeting, he never saw Jones again and all further communications were by e-mail, either that or through Jones’s man Jack.

‘Jack?’ Clark said. ‘Who the hell’s Jack?’

‘This foreign guy who worked for Jones.’

‘Foreign guy? Where was he from? What country?’

‘I dunno,’ Pugh said. ‘He spoke English but he had an accent, maybe Russian, somethin’ like that. He seemed to think it was funny calling himself Jack. He showed up at my place one day and explained he was just there to make sure things got done right. He was also the guy, by the way, who was gonna shoot me if Jones took his ball cap off at the Waffle Shop. Said he woulda killed me easy, bein’ only three hundred yards away.’

‘Wait a minute!’ Clark said. ‘Goddammit, what in the hell are you talking about?’

Ten minutes later, it all became clear. Jones, not trusting Jubal and his men to follow orders, had sent in someone he could rely on to oversee things. Myron Clark had figured that Jones selected Pugh because Pugh was willing to kill for money, because he had an organization already in place, and if things went wrong a racist like Pugh would be the perfect patsy to blame things on. But Clark had always found it hard to believe that Jones, particularly for an opera tion this complex, would have such confidence in Pugh’s ability. So Jones had assigned a straw boss, a man to manage Pugh. Jones would send Pugh the e-mails and tell Pugh where to send his men, and Jack would be there to make sure they did what they were told to do. But all Pugh could tell him about Jack was that he sounded ‘Russian or something, was white, and kind of a smartass.’ Physically, the description Pugh gave of ‘Jack’ was useless – blond hair, light blue eyes, ‘sorta handsome’ – but Clark left the interrogation immediately to let his boss know that Pugh had had some outside help, a pro, maybe Russian mafia, maybe someone with a military background, but somebody good enough with a rifle to shoot Pugh from three hundred yards away if Jones thought he needed to be shot.

‘So how’d you do it, Jubal?’ Clark asked. ‘How’d you get these people to commit these acts of terrorism?’

Pugh said it was the same in all three cases. They told Reza Zarif, Youseff Khalid, and Mustafa Ahmed that people close to them would be killed if they didn’t do what they were told. Pugh said he had no idea how Jones had identified the Muslims, but it was obvious that Jones had done a lot of research to find people with some sort of grievance that could later be considered a motive for doing what they did. All Pugh knew was that a target would be identified, and detailed instructions for how to capture the target and use his loved ones to coerce him were all provided by Mr Jones and his man Jack.

Pugh said Randy and two other men did all the work. One of those men was the late Donny Cray. The second person was the guy Danny DeMarco had shot, Harlan Rhodes. Danny had not killed Rhodes, and he was currently in a hospital in D.C. being guarded by federal agents.

‘What about this guy Jack?’ Clark asked.

‘He went with ’em, but he didn’t do any of the heavy liftin’. I mean, he never killed anybody or anything. He’d just make sure that Randy and Donny and Harlan knew what to do.’

According to Pugh, the day Reza Zarif tried to crash his plane into the White House, Randy and Donny Cray entered Reza Zarif’s house at 3
A.M
. wearing ski masks and they tied up Reza’s family. Then Randy handed Reza a gun and a box of shells and told him to load the gun. When Reza refused, Randy lit a cigarette and said he was going to blind Reza’s son with the cigarette if Reza didn’t do what he was told. Reza loaded the gun. Then Randy explained to Reza what they wanted him to do and said if he didn’t do exactly what he was told, he was going to make Reza watch while they raped his wife and children – including his son. Randy explained to Reza that Harlan Rhodes had a taste for boys, having spent some time in jail.

‘Jesus,’ Clark said. It didn’t take much of an imagi nation to visualize the terror experienced by Reza Zarif’s wife and young kids.

‘Yeah,’ Jubal said. ‘Randy really spooked that Arab guy.’

‘He was an American, you idiot,’ Clark said,

‘Whatever,’ Jubal said. ‘Anyway, Randy told the guy that after they raped his family a couple times each, they were gonna tie ’em all up and pour gasoline on ’em and burn ’em alive.’

But Randy said if Reza Zarif cooperated, and since his family couldn’t identify Randy and Donny, they’d let Reza’s family go. So they gave Reza a choice. He could either allow his family to suffer painfully before they died, or kill himself by flying his plane at the White House. Reza made the only choice he could.

‘After that,’ Pugh said, ‘Randy followed the guy to the airfield and waited until he took off. Then he called Donny, and Donny killed them little ragheads.’

It took a lot of willpower for Myron Clark not to hit Jubal Pugh.

‘What happened to Donny Cray?’ Clark asked. ‘And don’t tell me he died in a car accident.’

Pugh said that when the FBI found Donny’s fingerprint on the bullet box, Mr Jones sent Pugh an e-mail saying Donny had to go and told him how he wanted him to die. Because Jubal could be tied to Cray, Pugh agreed, though he felt bad about it.

‘Donny,’ Pugh said, ‘could be a little ornery at times, but he’d give you the shirt off his back if you were a friend.’

‘So how’d you kill this guy who’d give you the shirt off his back?’

Pugh said he had Harlan Rhodes snap Donny’s neck and then he bashed the head of Donny’s skinny girlfriend against the windshield of Donny’s truck.

‘That Harlan,’ Pugh said, ‘he looks fat, but he’s stronger than a gorilla. Then him and Randy drove Donny’s truck to a good spot, put the bodies in the front seat, and pushed it down a hill.’

‘How did Jones know the FBI had Donny Cray’s fingerprint?’ Clark asked.

‘Beats me,’ Pugh said. Then he smiled, ‘If I had to guess, I’d say that maybe Jones has one of you Hoover boys on the payroll too.’

‘Do you have any facts or any specific infor mation that a member of the FBI was involved with this Mr Jones?’ Clark said.

‘Well, no,’ Jubal said.

‘Then shut the hell up about the Bureau being involved in anything, you ferret-faced shit.’

‘Hey, I’m sor—’

‘Now tell me what you did to get Youseff Khalid to hijack that airplane.’

Two hours later, Myron Clark thought he had the whole story. In the case of Youseff Khalid, and un beknown to the FBI, Khalid had had a mistress, an African American woman named Athena Warner. Pugh’s men waited until Khalid visited his mistress at her home in the Bronx and threatened to rape and kill her if Khalid didn’t attempt to hijack the plane.

‘His mistress?’ Clark said.

‘Yeah, I guess Jones followed him or something, found out that boy had hisself a piece on the side. I told you he researched these people good.’

‘Where’d the plastic gun come from?’ Clark asked.

‘Jack. He gave it to Randy. Don’t know where ol’ Jack got it, but that was a pretty slick piece of hardware.’

In addition to threatening to kill Khalid’s mistress, they showed Khalid pictures of his two older children, entering their respective schools, and said they’d also be killed if Youseff didn’t attempt the hijack.

Pugh said that before boarding the plane in New York, Youseff was allowed to speak with his mistress so he’d be assured she was still alive, and Randy told Youseff the same thing he’d told Reza Zarif: since Youseff’s mistress had never seen Randy’s or Harlan Rhodes’s faces, they wouldn’t kill her if Youseff did what he was supposed to do.

‘But they killed her, didn’t they?’ Clark said.

‘Yeah,’ fraid so. And they had to rape her a little before they did. You know, so it’d just look like your ordinary big-city crime.’

Clark stood up. ‘Jubal, we’re gonna take a break now. I’m afraid if we don’t stop for a minute, I just might break every bone in your face.’

They were keeping Pugh in a cabin at Quantico, and the cabin was in the woods on a piece of land that Clark wished he owned. The setting was so peaceful you’d never guess it currently housed a piece of human flotsam like Jubal Pugh. Clark took in the aroma of the pines and let the cold air blast his cheeks red, then he called a number and told an agent to get the details on Athena Warner’s death. Following the call, he just sat there looking into the woods for five minutes. When he felt Pugh was safe from him, he went back inside.

‘Okay,’ Clark said, ‘now tell me what you did to Mustafa Ahmed.’

‘Who?’ Pugh said.

‘The cabdriver. The Capitol Hill bomber.’

‘Oh, yeah. I have a hard time keeping all them sand niggers’ names straight in my head.’

Clark took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘I swear, Pugh, that if you don’t show a little more respect for these people you killed, I’m gonna—’

‘Hey, sorry. Didn’t know they was friends of yours. And
I
didn’t kill
nobody
.’

Clark just shook his head and made a get-on-with-it motion with his hand.

Pugh said the same ploy was used again: Mustafa and his niece were captured, and Mustafa was told to act like he was going blow up the Capitol or the girl would be killed, and if she talked her mother and younger brother would also die.

Then Clark realized what Pugh had just said.

‘What do you mean,
act
like he was going to blow up the Capitol?’ Clark asked.

‘Jones said to tell those people,’ Pugh said, ‘that they didn’t actually have to kill anyone. All that Youseff guy had to do was
try
to hijack the plane: you know, get the gun on board, wave it around. Same way with the cabbie. He just had to put on the bomb vest and show it to the guards. He was told the bomb wouldn’t go off.’

Now it made more sense to Clark. If
he
was given a choice of either seeing his family killed or blowing up the Capitol and crippling the United States government, would he do it? He didn’t know. But if the choice was only to sacrifice himself to save his family, it would certainly be an easier decision. So now he understood. In all three cases the Muslim Americans involved knew in advance they’d be killed before they could actually harm other people. Or maybe they didn’t all know that they’d be killed. Reza Zarif certainly did; he knew his plane would be shot down. But it was possible that neither Youseff Khalid nor Mustafa Ahmed knew they’d be shot. Youseff had been told only that he had to attempt to hijack the plane, and Mustafa was told the bomb vest wouldn’t explode.