Fear City (18 page)

“No, really. Just had a crazy thought.”

“Thoughts are good. Let's hope you have another one real soon.”

“Very funny.” Jack shook off the unease—no way at the moment to follow it up—and changed the subject. “Ran into a fellow I think you know. Edward Burkes?”

Bertel frowned. “Burkes? Don't think so.”

Jack watched closely for a spark of recognition but couldn't find one.

“A Scotsman. With the UK Mission to the UN.”

He shook his head. “Doesn't ring any sort of bell. I don't—” He straightened in his seat and gripped the steering wheel. “Well, speak of the devil…”

A long black Mercedes was pulling to a stop before the mosque.

“Is that the same car?”

“Sure as hell looks like it. I
know
that's the same driver.”

Jack peered through the windshield as the rear doors opened. Kadir, Mahmoud, and a third Arab got out.

“Who's the new guy?”

“He's calling himself Ramzi Yousef.” He handed Jack a pair a field glasses. “Take a look.”

Jack focused on the twitchy guy, got a good look at his long face. He lowered the glasses.

“He's got Manson eyes.”

“What?”

“Ever see those pictures of Charles Manson after he was caught? This guy's got the same eyes.”

And then a fourth Arab stepped out of the front passenger door—tall, trim, wearing a skullcap and a fitted gray robe that buttoned to the throat.

“There he is,” Bertel said. “The mystery Mohammedan.” He laughed. “Do you have some sort of psychic link to these Mohammedans?”

“What?”

“Did you draw them here? I mean, it's like I'm getting a second chance. The exact same thing happened last Wednesday: The jihadists got out and the car took off. I had to choose which to follow. I chose the car but lost it in traffic and came up empty-handed all around. If you'd been here, you could have followed the jihadists and maybe we'd have learned something.”

Jack already had his door open. “Dibs on the mystery Arab.”

“Okay. But why?”

“Because any friend of Reggie's is a friend of mine.”

He hurried back around the corner to the pickup. He didn't know for sure whether Reggie was linked to Cristin, but Bertel said Reggie was linked to the mystery guy, and that was enough for Jack at the moment.

Because he didn't have a single goddamn other thing to go on.

 

3

Nasser and the Mercedes glided away from the curb, leaving the three jihadists clustered in a knot on the sidewalk. He hoped they kept their word. No worry about them pocketing the extra money he'd promised. He had no doubt they would build two bombs, but he didn't know if they might decide at the last minute to place both in the Trade Towers.

His driver, Brajko Klari
ć
, said, “They are—what is word? Unagreeable?”

“Disagreeable.” Nasser had moved to the rear seat. “And they are indeed that.” He lowered the window to freshen the air. “What a stench.”

“They are building bombs?”

The question startled Nasser. Had he been listening? “You speak Egyptian?”

The driver laughed. “No. I know smell.”

“You've made bombs?”

“In my spare time back home I blow up Serbs.”

“I see.”

Drexler had a cadre of East European and Baltic operatives he used, preferring them to Americans and Western Europeans. This Croat was proving more interesting than his predecessor, Kristof Szeto, who had been Drexler's favored driver and operative for years.

“By the way, what happened to Szeto?”

“He goes home to get mother.”

“Is she ill?”

“No. Order brings her to city to work.”

“To New York?”

Women weren't allowed in the Order. Why—?

“She is to be housekeeper for special person on Fifth Avenue.”

“Ah.”

Now he understood. The Order owned a penthouse on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park. The One was going to be staying there. His staff would be connected to the Order, of course.

He noticed a Nikon with a telephoto lens sitting on the front seat.

“What have you been photographing?”

“Remember man who follow us from mosque last week?”

“Vaguely.”

Nasser remembered Klari
ć
saying they were being followed, but he'd managed to lose the tail before they'd left Jersey City.

“He is there this morning in same car. I think he is watching mosque.”

Nasser didn't like that. The bomb-building jihadists weren't the brightest he'd dealt with. Had they given themselves away?

“Could be FBI.”

“Is what I am thinking. I take pictures while you are outside talking to the disagreeable ones.”

“Good thinking. We'll pass them around when they're developed.”

“He have visitor today.”

“In his car?”

“Yes. I take picture of him when he get out just before we leave.”

Nasser turned in the seat and peered through the rear window. “Is he following us?”

“I do not know for sure. I did not see him drive up. He will be in unknown car. Is hard to tell, but I will watch.”

Nasser settled back. “You do that.”

He noticed an unusual fob hanging from the keys in the ignition—rectangular parchment with a strange symbol:

“What does that mean?” Nasser said, pointing.

Klari
ć
shrugged. “I do not know. Is tattoo. I take it from whore.”

Nasser's stomach lurched. “Whore? Not Danaë—”

“We learn is not real name. Is—”

“Don't tell me. I don't want to know.”

“I take from back of neck. We do not want her known, so I take and cure with salt.” He flicked it with his finger. “Is nice, no?”

Nasser could not answer. He leaned back and fought his rising gorge.

Last Wednesday, after Danaë had walked through their meeting at Trejador's suite, he'd followed her to an apartment house in the East Seventies. He'd reported the address to Drexler, who then told him that Trejador had decided that it was too risky to let her go. Drexler gave him two names suggested by Trejador. Nasser was to instruct them to take the girl and find out what she'd heard about Rabin and D'Amato; if she knew something, find out who, if anyone, she'd told and go after them as well.

The two names were Reggie—American white trash Nasser had dealt with before—and Brajko Klari
ć
, the fellow sitting behind the wheel. Nasser would have much preferred to hire Danaë and gently inquire as to what she knew during the course of an intense sexual encounter. But orders were orders, especially when they came from Trejador.

Reggie and Klari
ć
eventually reported back that she knew nothing and that her body would never be found. Or if by some chance found, never identified.

“And even if she is found and identified,” Klari
ć
said, “who care? She is only whore. She is nobody.”

She was someone to me, Nasser thought.

Someone he'd wanted to bed.

“I tell you what we did. Is very interesting man, that Reggie. First he—”

“Stop. I don't have time for this now. I have other things to think about.”

He didn't want any details, especially the taking of such a grisly trophy. What sort of person even thinks of that, let alone does it? Really, the things he had to do and the people he had to deal with in the course of trying to change the world …

He'd managed to block the whole episode from his consciousness, but that grisly key fob brought it all back.

He didn't say another word until the Croat pulled to a stop on Second Avenue outside his building.

“Get that film to a one-hour developer and have the photos dropped off at my apartment. I want to waste no time identifying these two men.”

As he strode toward his building's entrance, the giant headline of the
New York Post
, on prominent display at the corner newsstand, caught his eye.

DD

ID'd!

DD? That had to mean the so-called Ditmars Dahlia that had so dominated the news recently. He hadn't been interested but the story proved inescapable. Now that she'd been identified, perhaps they'd move on to something else.

A yearbook photo of a pretty brunette occupied the lower right corner. Nasser walked over for a closer look and almost tumbled over when he recognized Danaë. Only this said her name was Cristin Ott.

Reggie and Klari
ć
had said her body would never be found! And if found, never identified. Yet here she was for all to see.

Cristin Ott … a beautiful young woman tortured and mutilated … all upon his order. And for what? For something she'd never overheard in the first place.

His gorge rose again and this time he could not hold it down.

 

4

Jack had pulled to the curb by a fire hydrant when the Mercedes stopped near the corner of Second and East 51st.

Following had been easy. Assuming they'd be heading for Manhattan he'd hung far back. When a light went wrong for him, he waited it out and then hustled toward the Holland Tunnel. Eventually he caught up to them and trailed them into the city and here to Turtle Bay.

Mystery Arab exited the car across the street and Jack expected him to enter the apartment building there. But first he wandered over to the newsstand and stared at the papers. Then, instead of buying anything, he lurched to the curb and vomited.

Some bad hummus for breakfast, maybe?

Here was a chance to play Good Samaritan and find out who he was. He left the truck illegally parked and tried to cross the street, but a surge of traffic held him up. The guy had recovered and was moving toward the front door of the building by the time Jack trotted across.

Okay. Next best thing: follow him inside.

But again he was too late. Jack was hurrying toward the entrance as Mystery Arab tapped in the entry code, but the man slipped inside and let the door close behind him before Jack could scoot through.

He resisted kicking the glass door and peered through it instead. Across the vestibule, the elevator sat open and waiting. He ducked back as Mystery Arab stepped inside. No sense in being seen if it wasn't necessary. He counted to five, then returned to the door. He watched the red LED display above the call button count up from
L
to
9
. After
9
, it began counting down again.

Probably not a risky guess to assume that Mystery Arab lived on the ninth floor. Jack checked the call buttons to the right of the door. Only one Arab name on nine:
N. al-Thani
.

Had to be him. Mystery Arab now had a name. Jack was pretty sure it hadn't been on the list Rebecca had given him, but he'd had time for only a quick scan.

He spotted a pay phone near the corner newsstand. He dropped a quarter and called the number Burkes had given him.

Watch it be a wrong number, he thought. But a familiar voice answered.

“Burkes.”

“It's Jack from last night. Got that list handy?”

A heartbeat's hesitation, then,
“Right here.”

“Is the name al-Thani on it?” He spelled it.

“That's Arab, and there's no Arabs on the list.”

“Just checking. When do I get it back?”

“I've already run off a Xerox. Where are you?”

“Turtle Bay.”

“Brilliant. Right in the neighborhood. Got a car?”

“Got a pickup.”

“Swing by One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza—Second Avenue between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh—and I'll have Rob out front with the copy.”

“Got it. Be right there.”

As he headed back to the truck, he wondered how Bertel was doing on his end. Too bad he didn't have a cellular phone so they could check in whenever they needed. Maybe he should think about joining the 1990s.

 

5

When Kadir returned from calling Salameh on the phone inside the mosque, he found Mahmoud and Yousef in a heated discussion. They stood in front of the Chinese takeout storefront—closed at this hour—gesticulating wildly as they argued in Arabic.

“I still think I should call my uncle,” Yousef was saying. “He went to much trouble and expense to bring me here. Ajaj is still paying the price.”

This was true. Last September, Yousef's uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, had sent Ahmad Ajaj through JFK immigration at the same time as Yousef with a deliberately sloppy passport forgery. The resultant commotion allowed Yousef's passport—also forged, but a much better job—to pass muster. Ajaj was still in jail.

“Call your uncle,” Mahmoud said, “but no matter what he says, the plan is changed.” He jabbed a finger into Yousef's bony chest. “And if you don't help us, you will be a traitor to jihad. And if I tell Sheikh Omar, you will soon hear of a fatwah telling everyone of your treachery.”