Fear City (26 page)

“I understand that, but this is not a matter to be trusted to the phone lines nor to be called out between idling cars. I will be brief.” He pointed to the passenger seat. “Join me.”

Kadir jumped out and hurried around the front of the car. When he'd slammed the door and settled himself in the seat, he said, “Well?”

“You remember the red-haired American you drove with back and forth to Virginia?”

His face darkened. “Reggie. I remember him—the pig who did nothing but insult me the whole trip. I was a different person then. If he spoke to me that way today I would slit his throat.”

Nasser didn't know if Kadir would really carry through with the threat, but no mistaking the anger and hatred behind the words.

“I take it then that you didn't see him around here yesterday?”

“Around here? No. I would have spit on him if I had.”

“And how about the man who was my driver the last few times we met?”

He shook his head. “No. Why do you ask?”

“They are missing.”

“Well, you are well rid of that red-haired one. Is this why you called? You could have asked me this over the phone.” He reached for the door handle. “You have made me waste precious time.”

“We fear the FBI might have them.”

Kadir froze, then released the handle. “The FBI? Why do you say that?”

“Someone has been watching the mosque. Reggie and Klari
ć
were to find out who they were. We did not think they were FBI, but now that our two men have disappeared, we have begun to wonder.”

Kadir twisted in his seat, looking up and down the block. “Where are they?”

“They've disappeared as well. You can understand my concern: Were they simply watching the mosque, or were they watching you?”

Concern replaced hostility in Kadir's expression. “We have not been followed.”

“You're sure?”

“Absolutely.” But his eyes said otherwise.

“Be extra watchful,” Nasser said. “Especially at this crucial juncture. Speaking of which, you were able to procure sufficient supplies for a second bomb?”

He nodded. “We ordered immediately and they were delivered that very day.”

“And how is the manufacturing going?”

“It is slow but we are making progress. We have mixed enough for the first and we have started on the second.” He gestured past Nasser to the truck. “Each will fill an entire van. We will need two of those. We rented this one now to be sure we would have it ready. Another will be available Thursday.”

“Friday is the day, then?”

Kadir's eyes lit. “Yousef will leave his van by the front of the UN. I will park mine on the highway that runs beneath the building. On Friday morning we will turn the world on its head.”

Nasser smiled. “May Allah guide you until then.”

At least this end was going as planned.

He let Kadir get back to his work and made one more circuit of this section of Kennedy Boulevard, but still no sign of Lonnie or the older man.

Reggie and Klari
ć
disappeared just as those two stopped watching the mosque, he thought. There had to be a connection.

The Holland Tunnel was just a little way east of here, so he decided to take that back to the city. It would put him farther downtown than the Lincoln, but it was closer.

As he passed through Hoboken along the way, a pickup truck made a reckless swerve around him. Nasser figured this was someone in a hurry, but once he got in front of him he barely did the speed limit. Nasser was tempted to give him a blast of horn but thought better of it. This was not a very congenial-looking neighborhood.

As they were passing through an area of boarded-up factories, the pickup stopped midblock. Nasser had to slam on his brakes to avoid plowing into him.
Now
he hit the horn.

A burly-looking man jumped out and hurried toward him. He carried some sort of expandable metal wand in his hand. This didn't look good. Nasser locked his doors and began turning the wheel so he could pull out and away. But just then a black van with tinted windows pulled up.

Everything happened very quickly then. The man from the pickup smashed Nasser's window as the side door of the van slid open and released another bruiser. A hand reached through the window, unlocked the door, and pulled it open. The second man carried a dagger that cut through Nasser's seat belt like tissue paper. With frightening efficiency he was pulled from the Volvo and hurled into the van. Nasser resisted but he was outweighed and overpowered. The two men pinned him to the van floor by kneeling on his back as they expertly bound his wrists and ankles with plastic ties. One of the men exited and slammed the door closed. Immediately the van began moving.

All within fifteen seconds at most.

Had he fallen victim to some sort of paramilitary organization?

“Who are you?” Nasser said, hiding his fear. “What is the meaning of this?”

He realized he sounded contemptibly trite, but those were the words that sprang to his lips.

“Mister Nasser al-Thani, I presume,” said a Scottish-accented voice from somewhere behind him. “We have some questions for you.”

Still on his belly, Nasser couldn't see who had spoken.

“I'm happy to answer questions. You didn't have to abduct me.”

“Well, we want
straight
answers.”

“What about?”

“A young woman. Known originally as Cristin Ott. Then later as simply Danaë, and later still as the Ditmars Dahlia.”

Nasser's saliva evaporated. How had they connected him with Danaë? Oh, wait. Klari
ć
and Reggie were gone, and now this. Obvious. Klari
ć
would never break. But Reggie … Reggie would spill his guts. But how much had he known?

Stall …

“I've read about her, of course. But I know only what was in the papers.”

A fist slammed into his right kidney.

“Wrong answer.”

The pain left him breathless and unable to speak.

When he managed to regain his voice, he said, “Why are you asking me? And why are you interested? The papers said she was a call girl, a nobody.”

Another blow, this time to the left kidney.

“She was a
some
body,” said another voice from another direction. “Very much a somebody.”

Nasser lifted his head to see. The driver had spoken. He turned and glanced over his shoulder at Nasser and the look on his face was enough to freeze the blood. Good thing he was driving or he might be tearing at Nasser's face right now.

And then Nasser realized he'd seen that face before. In a photograph.

Lonnie.

 

3

Jack ground his teeth in rage. This al-Thani was the second slimeball to call Cristin a nobody. Where did they get off? They were the nobodies, and they'd soon see how little they were worth.

Jack had expected to return to the city but Burkes instead directed him to the turnpike via Tonnelle Avenue. They traveled north to route 17 and took that farther north into the wooded hills of Bergen County. At the end of a winding, sloping driveway in Mahwah they came to a long, low ranch house in the woods.

“Whose place is this?” he said as he pulled the van to a halt beside a black sedan parked by the front door. Rob parked Bertel's pickup a few feet away.

“Ours,” Burkes said.

“As in the UK mission's?”

He nodded. “A little woodsy getaway for the diplomats. None of whom are here now.”

“This where you took Reggie?”

“He's cuffed up inside.”

Rob and Gerald carried the bound but still struggling al-Thani out of the van. Burkes walked ahead and unlocked the front door while Jack brought up the rear. They trooped inside where al-Thani was dropped on a couch.

“I'll check on the other one,” Rob said.

Jack followed him to a rear bedroom where Reggie lay cuffed to a bed. He didn't look so hot—pale, sweaty, with the arrow protruding full length from his throat.

Some of the glaze burned off his eyes when he saw Jack.

“Fuck you!” he rasped, still unable to speak above a harsh whisper.

“Well,” Jack said, “just let
me
say, ‘Thank
you
' for your help in tracking down your pal al-Thani. He's in the next room. Want to say hello?”

Reggie said no more, simply closed his eyes.

Rob checked his manacles to make sure they were secure, then led Jack back out to the main room.

“You're leaving the arrow in his throat?” he said when he saw Burkes.

“Don't have much choice. We'd have to wriggle the head to get it out and who knows what that would do? Might sever one of his carotid arteries. If that happens he'd be dead in less than a minute and not a damn thing we could do to save him. Same risks from trying to saw off the shaft to shorten it.”

“So he's sort of a human weather vane.”

Burkes smiled. “You could say that.”

“You really worried about him dying?”

“For the nonce.” He gestured to al-Thani. “As I told you, once this tosser opens up, Reggie becomes redundant.”

Burkes opened a door that revealed stairs going down.

“All right. Let's get started.”

He held the door for his two men and their captive but stepped in front of Jack as he tried to follow.

“Here's where you go for a drive, Jack.”

“What? Again? Forget about it.”

He blocked Jack's way as he tried to pass. “We've had this discussion already.”

“Yeah, and it was for nothing. You didn't have to do anything to Reggie to make him fold like wet cardboard, so—”

Burkes shook his head. “This one will be different. I can tell already he's going to be a tough break.”

“He called Cristin a nobody.”

“Be that as it may, we've got a nice windowless room down there. I'll be asking the questions while Rob and Gerald—who've been trained in advanced interrogation techniques—get down to the rough stuff.”

“I'm staying.”

Burkes sighed. “You're going. Take the pickup.”

“Shit, Burkes. That's the guy who ordered the other scumbags to torture and kill Cristin!”

“So Reggie says. We'll find out. And we'll also find out if someone higher up ordered her death. I don't think it ends with al-Thani. And we'll find out
why
. We'll find out why D'Amato was so important and—”

Jack heard his voice rising. “I don't give a shit about D'Amato! I want this bastard's ass!”

“Don't make me call the lads.”

After his conversation with Abe last night, Jack knew he needed to respect the physical prowess of anyone who'd gone through SAS training. He'd read what SEALs went through, and if theirs was anything like that, he knew that if they wanted him out the door, he'd be out the door no matter how he resisted.

“This sucks,” he said, although a secret part of him was glad that he wasn't being given a choice.

“That's what you think now. Someday you'll thank me.”

Would he? Maybe. Despite the rage boiling within him, and as much as these fuckers deserved to die in agony, he wasn't sure how much he could inflict. He'd have to be cool and methodical to do it right. He didn't think he could be cool and methodical about something like that.

“Yeah, right.”

“Buck up, lad. We'll have him broken in time for a leisurely lunch.”

 

4

Kadir had borrowed Salameh's car for an hour or so to drive into the city. This was a reconnaissance mission. Last night he and Ayyad had pored over maps of Manhattan's Midtown East and the UN Plaza. Ayyad had decided that the most effective place for an explosion in the FDR underpass would be five hundred feet from the end—the spot closest to the base of the towering Secretariat building.

Kadir entered through the Lincoln Tunnel and crossed to the East Side where he entered the FDR Drive. The expressway had few off-ramps and seemingly fewer on-ramps. The closest entrance uptown from the UN complex was at East 63rd Street.

Traffic was moving well as he drove under the Queensboro Bridge, then into the Sutton Place underpass. As he emerged from that, he saw the glass-sided domino of the Secretariat Building looming less than half a mile ahead, almost edge on.

He had been practicing measuring five hundred feet by eye, and so he kept careful watch on the ledged inner wall of the UN underpass. He could see daylight ahead and slowed as he marked the spot in his mind.

Here he would have to stop the van and immediately light the fuses. Then he would put on his emergency flashers, get out, and open the front hood to make it look like he was having engine trouble. As soon as that was done he would climb onto the ledge and run the five hundred feet to the end of the underpass where he would duck around the corner. Once there he would be protected from the direct force of the blast, but he wouldn't stop moving.

The explosion would demolish everything in the underpass, expending most of its force upward and outward. The underpass would collapse and, with Allah's help, the blast would undermine the Secretariat Building, tumbling it into the East River. That was why Kadir would keep running—rounding the big playground and moving up 41st Street—because no one had any idea how much debris would be in the air and where it would land. By that time Yousef's bomb in the front of the UN would have detonated and Kadir could walk up First Avenue and pretend to be just another shell-shocked survivor as he gloried in the destruction and chaos he had helped create.

He came out into the sunlight again and took the first off-ramp. He made his way to First Avenue and headed back uptown. As he passed the UN, he noticed yellow-vested policemen waving the traffic on, keeping it moving, not allowing any vehicles except buses to stop.

Alarm jolted through him. How would Yousef be able to position his van and light the fuses if he wasn't allowed to stop?